Through the Fire
by Yan Takagawa
Summary: Only one spark can start a fire. The Black Organization never predicted the consequences that could be caused by making an unknowing mistake: leaving witnesses. Working on both sides of the globe, Team Phantom will hunt the syndicate down and set the records right. But with secret upon secret, how long can they endure under the eyes of Japan's high school detectives?
1. Prologue

_Let the fires burn within us._

Through the Fire

Prologue: A Single Spark

* * *

Danny Fenton was an average almost-fifteen ghost fighter with superpowers. He was the acknowledged leader and core of Team Phantom, a covert four-member teenage ghost-fighting group. Nearly a year ago, Danny had been involved in an accident with his scientist parents' ultimate experiment: a portal into a parallel dimension known as the Ghost Zone. Urged on by his friend, Sam, he entered the still-inactive portal frame to see if he could fix an apparent malfunction. After pressing the "on" button that had been inconveniently placed _inside_ the portal, he was instantly shocked by multiple volts of electricity.

Instead of dying, the impossible happened; Danny now walked the fine line between life and death, having been infused with the essence of the Ghost Zone. Though still alive and completely human, he gained many new abilities and a greater (and still growing) appreciation for life. Due to a protective streak a mile wide and an almost obsessive hero complex, he – with the help of his friends – defended the city of Amity Park from the invading ghosts as Danny Phantom, teen superhero and ghost hunter extraordinaire.

Danny's first and oldest friend was Tucker Foley, the resident techno genius and carnivore. He and Danny had been best friends since grade school. He was pretty much a brother to the teen ghost fighter in everything but blood and name. As one of the original people to find out his friend's secret, he served as a virtual jack-of-all-trades, master of some, working as the partial offense and defense and technological hacker of the group. Though the techno geek could pass as the comic relief of the four, he was an important piece of the team.

Then, there was Sam Manson. Who could forget her? If Danny was the glue of Team Phantom, then she was certainly the backbone. In fact, without her, the team would never have existed. As the complete opposite of Tucker, she was the resident Goth as well as a nearly obsessive vegetarian and conservationist. Though she was a girl, she was by no means the weakest among the four teen ghost fighters, having gone full in from the start as offense, backup, and semi-strategist.

Danny's older sister, Jazz Fenton, was the last member of Team Phantom. A protective older sibling and aspiring psychologist, she would sometimes unwittingly get in the team's way before joining them. After finding out Danny's powers by chance, she kept his secret from everyone- even Danny himself- and often covered for him when he was in a tight spot. After finally confronting her brother about his secret, Jazz was slowly but surely accepted into the original team. Though her horrible aim with the Fenton thermos was unneeded, her skill with all other ghost weaponry was extremely helpful when put to work.

Together, the three were Danny's closest comrades: a part of his heart. These four were inseparable. Where one could be found, you would usually find at least two of the others there as well. Between balancing homework, trying to keep their continuous patrols secret, and coming home before curfew, the team had their work cut out for them.

This brings us to the start of this story, a week after the last day of school. Coincidentally, it was also the day before Danny's fifteenth birthday. Today, something would happen. It was something that none of the previously mentioned teenage ghost fighters could ever predict. None of them could know that such a peaceful day would spiral completely out of control in the blink of an eye. The events of that day would leave none of them unaffected.

The day began like any other day at Fenton Works of Amity Park, Illinois, USA. Same old breakfast, same old schedule, same old crazy scientist parents, same old _sister_. Well, the last two weren't _really_ part of the list.

Four teens of the same apparent age walked down the street, the oldest following the other three from a short distance behind while reading a book. Carefree in the moment, they laughed and chatted in the way that only true friends could.

"You're gonna be old enough to get your driver's permit, not to mention that in one or two years, you'll be able to make another step towards becoming a _real_ astronaut! Sure, you got to land that possessed space shuttle before. Sure, you went into orbit to stop Technus. This is _real_ now! I bet you're psyched, huh?" Tucker exclaimed.

Danny crossed his arms behind his head, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Actually, I've kinda been rethinking that. I could be an incredible asset to NASA, but with my abilities, well, I could do… more." He paused, then continued hurriedly, "A-anyway, I'd probably be able to do more as a policeman. I'm considering either joining the police force, going into the FBI, or becoming a private detective."

Sam dropped in on the conversation. "I'd never thought you'd say that. Detective, huh? Well, it does have a nice ring to it. It sounds better than _Inspector_ Fenton, and I just can't imagine you as a random FBI agent," she snorted.

Danny laughed, picturing himself in uniform or as an undercover agent.

_That _does_ sound kinda ridiculous. _"Yeah. I've mostly been working on my observational skills, anyway. I bet I can tell where each of you guys were and what you were doing before we met up," he said proudly.

"Oh, really?" Sam drew her words out slowly.

"Yeah. Jazz, you were at the library checking out books. This can be proven by both the book you're reading and the pen with the library's logo that you have tucked behind your ear, since you only use that pen when you go there. Also, your cell phone was off when I tried to call you earlier."

"Nice deduction, little brother," Jazz said, looking up from her book.

"Thanks," Danny grinned before continuing, "Tucker, you were at home. The small sauce stain on your shirt tells me that you were eating your mom's special pot roast. Not only that, today is your dad's day off, which pretty much confirms it. Strangely, your hands are totally clean. This shows that you washed up so you could use your PDA or laptop without any chance of getting them dirty. Since you keep rubbing your wrists and cracking your knuckles like that, I'm gonna take a guess and say that you went up against _KaitoKid1412_ on _Doomed_ and lost, _again_."

"Hey, that guy is _hard_ for a newbie! Even _Sam_ had a hard time soloing him!" Tucker said, adjusting his glasses. "But yeah, I can see why you don't say this stuff aloud. It's almost like you were there," he shuddered.

The half-ghost shrugged. "I know, it creeped me out at first too. Okay, Sam, you were at your greenhouse. You still have a bit of dust on your hands from your plants. The trails through the dust show that you watered your plants and sprinkled your hand on accident. Another possibility is that you were in a hurry to meet up with us and were rushing too fast to properly wash up. Am I right?"

"Actually, it was my _grandmother's_ garden since my parents still think that I'm in Europe. I don't really want to risk revealing that I'm pretty much living next door by going to my greenhouse," Sam corrected, subconsciously brushing her hands on her skirt. "Still, that was great! You got all that information from dirty hands, seriously? Danny, you must've been doing some crazy studies!"

Danny rubbed his head sheepishly. "Eh, you can be surprised what I can do when I have either motivation or time. I've already finished reading the Sherlock Holmes books that you gave me as an early birthday present when you were in England. _That's_ the sort of thing I wouldn't mind doing- catching criminals the authorities can't. Police and FBI have more access to important stuff, but they're restricted to certain things by the government. That's what made 'private detective' go to the first on my career list," he explained. "If you think about it a certain way, it's not that much different from what we're already doing."

The half-ghost paused. _Wait a second…_

He turned back, still walking, to face his team. "Hey, if I'm gonna be a detective, what will you guys be? Last time I checked, Tucker wanted to be a comic book writer or computer programmer, Jazz wanted to be a psychiatrist, and you wanted to be a vet, a botanist, or one of those other guys, whatever you call those call those obsessive nature conversationalists."

"The word is 'conservationists.' Sorry to disappoint, but I'm still going to be a psychiatrist, little brother, though I might take a few courses in law to supplement my career," Jazz called from behind.

Danny groaned. "It was worth a shot…"

Tucker gazed forward thoughtfully. "You're right. Those things are history, dude. There's one thing I know, though. I'm definitely doing something with technology. I'm good at it, you know? I don't have anything particular in mind, but I have a pretty wide field of choice," he said seriously, tugging on his red beret absentmindedly.

"You're more than _good_ at it," Sam added. "Remember when you defeated Technus 5.0 single-handedly last month?"

The techno geek rubbed his head sheepishly. "I connected my PDA to Jazz's laptop and hacked into Vlad's system- that was the easy part. The hard part was getting _out_ without getting infected too. After I trapped Technus in Vlad's diary of self-pity…" the whole team, including Jazz (who'd caught up with them), shuddered. "Never mind. Man, that virus was a monster! It almost cracked my firewall before I sent it into an isolated part of Vlad's network. Fortunately, I was able to redirect it before it could. I wouldn't wish that virus on my worst enemy, Vlad included." Then he grinned. "I bet his diary's the reason we haven't seen Technus since then."

"Nah, it's because you're a closet genius," Danny teased. "There's a reason why we got you a nickname, _Techie."_

"Genius, schmenius. Don't forget why you got _yours,_ First In," Tucker returned easily, noting with amusement how his best friend twitched at the reminder. "It was the first time I've ever seen that virus, so it gave even me a hard time. It's called the Night Baron- almost a legend among computer geeks. Until then, even I thought it was a myth. According to the rumors on forums, it works by completely wiping out all memory, every scrap of data on the computer and anything connected to it. Fortunately, I'm no average computer geek. I've already upgraded the defenses on all of our tech. Our computers are probably better protected than the NSA's," he added proudly.

_What?!_

Jazz looked on concernedly as her brother and Sam started choking. "Um, are you guys alright?"

Danny glared at Tucker. "Yeah, but we just found out that our best friend is capable of defending against the _Night Baron_ of all viruses and didn't think to tell us _sooner!_ It's the so-called invincible virus that companies have been trying to destroy or reproduce ever since it was created several years ago. Tucker, you have to be careful. Forget about _waiting_ for a job through college- any one of those companies would probably _kill_ to have you on their side!" he said seriously.

For once, Tucker uncharacteristically fell silent. Jazz noticed the slightly awkward pause and changed the subject hurriedly. "How about you, Sam? What will you be?"

Sam shot a thankful glance at the redhead and smiled softly. "I'm considering joining the ASPCA. I'd be around animals _and_ catch criminals. Two for one."

Tucker finally looked up. "Being in this team really changed my viewpoint on life, you know?"

The group locked solemn gazes with each other as they walked down the street together in contemplative silence.

Danny nodded. "Yeah. I guess we're past the age where we feel like we can take on the world, huh? Granted, we _have_ taken the world on and won, but…" he trailed off, lifting his head to look a the sky. "Life is just too short, not long enough to do much except for leave an impression on the world. But when I'm with you guys, I really _do_ feel invincible," he said quietly.

_You're more important to me than you'll ever know._

Sam slung her arms around his and Tucker's shoulders while Jazz pulled her brother into a half-embrace from behind. "So do we, Danny. Who knows? Maybe the team _won't_ have to split up. With a you as a detective, Tucker as our technology expert, Sam as as an advocate of animal rights, and me, the psychologist and lawyer, we can form our own agency!"

Danny smiled. "Why not? Together, we'd bust any criminal. There's no way they can stand against us. We'll be unstoppable!" He pointed a finger upward. "After all, there is only one truth," he added grandly, grinning at his friends' groans.

"That was the cheesiest line I've ever heard. Did you pick it off a kid's superhero show?" Sam commented.

"Hey! I'll have you know that every great detective knows that line!" the sky-eyed teen whined, inwardly grinning like a loon._ Man, I love this life! _He thought, leaning on his friends' shoulders contentedly. The group laughed light-heartedly, the serious atmosphere broken.

They were four teens. Four young innocents, four teammates, four _true _friends. Each knew that one of the others would willingly die for them if the time came. They lived and thrived on this knowledge. Unknown to them, this would be one of the last minutes of true peace they would experience together for a long time.

* * *

A dark shadow slipped from behind a tall building into a nearby alley. In the deepest part of the shade, he halted abruptly. His pale, long-fingered hand pulled a sleek black cell phone from an inner pocket. His cold, ruthless gaze swept the surrounding cityscape for passerby or followers. These were the eyes of a killer, the eyes of a man who had killed countless innocents and had no regret.

After deeming the coast clear, the black-cloaked man tipped his head downward, black fedora obscuring his face as he spoke into the communication device.

"_Is everything ready?"_

There was static at the other end. _"Hai, aniki. Is the coast clear?"_

The man inclined his head, eyes narrowing on a group of four teens as they walked straight toward the location of his target. _"Wait. There are more coming in that direction. No one must be a close witness if it is to be seen as an accident."_

"_Hai, aniki."_

The man shifted slightly, long blonde hair hiding his face further. His watched the laughing foursome enter the building, expression showing no sign of guilt or remorse at what he would soon do.

"_Initiate in five minutes,"_ He intoned.

"_Hai, aniki."_

* * *

The four teens entered the front door of Fenton Works, laughing and joking. Danny had taken Tucker's beret and was quite literally bouncing off the walls to get away from the techno geek's grasp. Danny jumped up and positioned himself Spiderman-style in the corner of the ceiling, high out of the reach of his friend.

Tucker shook a fist playfully at the agile teen, knowing that he'd been beaten. "Dude, that is _so_ not fair! Not everyone can stick to walls like duct tape!"

Danny twirled the beret around one finger, making sure that he was securely wedged in his niche by his other three limbs. "Hey, you know that I'm not using my powers to stick up here. Any person with enough body strength can do it," he grinned. "Tell you what. I'll surrender if you can get me down from here without touching me."

Tucker hunched down and sat cross-legged below Danny's position. "Fine," he said, glaring over his glasses. "Then you _have_ to give my beret, and no take-backs!"

"Fair enough."

"Hey Danny, look! A ghost!"

"My ghost sense would've gone off," he replied dryly.

"It's the _Wisconsin_ Ghost!"

"Vlad is nowhere near here. You said it yourself- he's at a meeting the next town over."

"You sure he's not starting another misguided plot to… what was it again?" Tucker mused.

Danny ticked them off on his free hand. "Kill my dad, marry my mom, make me his son, own the Pa-" forgetting one important detail. "Wha- Aahhh!"

The half-ghost lost his grip on the corner of the ceiling, falling directly on top of Tucker. After recovering, the tech genius immediately slammed his friend on his back and tackled him to retrieve his beloved red beret. Sam and Jazz rolled their eyes at their antics. "Boys."

Danny caught Tucker in a solid headlock and gave him a vigorous noogie. "Hey! That _hurts!_" the techno geek wailed, struggling to get out of his friend's grip. Danny relented to Tucker's cries and let him go, playfully setting the beret on his friend's head at a jaunty angle, smirking at the indignant look on his face. "I see what you did there. Jazz gives good tips sometimes, doesn't she?"

"Of course I do, I'm your _older_ sister!"

"You're my _only_ sister, Jazz."

"True, but-"

"Jazz, Danny, you're back already?" Maddie Fenton entered the room, holding a plate of cookies. Smiling cheerfully, she offered the plate to Sam and Tucker. "Cookies, anyone? They're fresh. No, Danny, they're not poisoned! Mr. Lancer's visiting and was kind enough to bring some over."

The members of Team Phantom relaxed, each gratefully taking an ecto-free cookie. "Is your new weapon complete yet, Mom? I wouldn't mind trying it out," Jazz exclaimed.

Danny rolled his eyes.

_I wonder what would happen if Jazz said what she was _really_ thinking. It's probably something like, 'I wouldn't mind trying the weapon out so when I go out tonight with my brother and his friends to protect the city from property-destroying and potentially malevolent ghosts, I'll know how to use it. Oh yeah, and I need to make sure that it can't hurt said brother when it's in use by my held-in-ignorance ghost hunter parents who unknowingly hunt my brother and just happen to be the inventors of said weapon.'_

He snorted. _Yeah. That would go over well. Hm, I wonder if Mr. Lancer_ really_ made these cookies. There's a really strange smell coming from the kitchen._

"Not yet, but the prototype should be available for testing tomorrow. We just finished cleaning up for the day. Isn't that right, Jack?" the petite blue-clad woman called over her shoulder.

"Yeah, Maddie! Are you sure we can't work on it more today?" Jack Fenton whined as he bounded into the room, dragging a puffing Mr. Lancer behind him.

"_The Wind in the Willows_, Mr. Fenton! How do you have so much energy?" Mr. Lancer gasped.

"It's the fudge!" Jack replied cheerfully, shrugging his gigantic orange-clad frame nonchalantly.

The four teens rolled their eyes. "I wonder how we came to think of this stuff as normal," Danny commented wryly.

Team Phantom shrugged. "We're not so normal ourselves, you know," Sam reminded him.

Danny smiled. "But I wouldn't have it any other way."

It was one thing that they all agreed on. "Yeah."

* * *

Static crackled on the line. _"We're starting now! Is everything clear?"_

The black-cloaked man's cold gaze narrowed. _"Yes. Once you're done, join me here. The organization needs _them_ dead, not us."_

"_Hai, aniki. Proceeding as normal."_

The man smirked, the first sign of emotion he'd shown on this mission. The sound of a device clicking on the other line was audible on the cell phone. The countdown had begun.

"_Ten…_

"_Kyū…"_

* * *

_Ding-dong!_

Danny's ghost sense went off at the same time as the doorbell did. He stiffened, instinctively slipping into a defensive stance. Thankfully, his mom and dad had already turned to go back to the kitchen and Mr. Lancer was distracted for the moment as he talked with Jazz about something or the other. Still, he couldn't transform while his teacher was here. He had to hide.

"Danny, could you get that?" Maddie called over her shoulder.

…Or maybe not. Oh well, what better way to catch a ghost than have one waltz through your front door? He had a houseful of ghost hunters behind him, after all. With his friends' and sister's eyes on him, he walked over to the door and opened it cautiously. In the next instant, he wished he hadn't.

"BEWARE!"

* * *

"_Eight…_

"_Shichi…_

"_Six…"_

* * *

"Why are _you_ here?" Danny asked, annoyed.

A short, fat, blue-skinned, overall-clad ghost with a chronic obsession for boxes floated in front of the open door. "Beware! I, the Box Ghost, have come to warn you about the seemingly suspicious shadow that lurks with _strange_ language behind _that_ building!" The irritating box-loving ghost shouted, pointing a finger behind him.

"Warn me?" Danny asked, voice sharpening subtly. _Ghosts don't usually warn me about anything unless it's _really_ something to worry about. Even though it's the _Box Ghost_ talking, it has to be something important if he would knock on the door of _ghost hunters_, right?_

"_A Christmas Carol_, Mr. Fenton! Get away from that ghost!" Mr. Lancer exclaimed, positioning his sizeable girth in front of Sam, Tucker, and Jazz as he noticed the blue ghost, not knowing that said ghost was mostly harmless. Danny ignored his teacher's warning in favor of listening to the Box Ghost.

"Yes! His voice is _here_ on this boxy and square electrical device before he made FIRE! He was unable to detect ME, the Box Ghost, in my dealings. BEWARE!" he shouted, holding up a palm-sized cubical voice recorder that he procured from who-knows-where.

"So _that's_ where my voice recorder went…" Danny heard Tucker mutter.

Danny turned back to the Box Ghost. "Who were they?" he asked, regarding the persistently annoying ghost seriously for the very first time.

"I, the Box Ghost, will let you listen for yourselves! BEWARE!" he shouted, raising the cubical recorder above his head while pressing the "play" button. Danny's blood chilled as he heard the unfamiliar language being projected from the recording device. The cold tones, spoken in broken, static-punctuated sections, said more than he could decipher anyway.

"_Ore… Zzzshhhhf… jū-byō… Ffffshhh… Iie, shizuka na… Hai. Hajime, aniki… san-byō…"_

"It's Japanese…" He heard Sam whisper from behind the still-tense Mr. Lancer.

* * *

"_Go…_

"_Four…"_

* * *

"Can you understand it, Sam?" Danny asked urgently.

The Goth girl's forehead creased slightly as she nodded. "He's talking with someone on a phone. I'm not fluent, but I can understand enough. Wait… he said… no, it can't be!" her face paled beyond its normal complexion.

Danny noticed her change in composure. "What is it?" he questioned. _Please be nothing bad!_

Not answering, she turned to the Box Ghost. "How long ago did you record this?" she asked, voice tensed to match her body language.

"I, the Box Ghost, came here with the cubical device no less than _ten_ seconds ago!" he proclaimed loudly.

"There _is_ no time!" Sam whispered, horror lacing her voice with tones of pure, unadulterated terror.

* * *

"_San…_

"_Two…"_

* * *

Her body snapped around like a whiplash. "Get down, everybody!" she shouted, terror evident in her voice.

"Manson, I'd like an explanation-" Mr. Lancer began.

"No time!" she snapped, pulling him down as Jazz and Tucker hit the ground beside her. She hoped and prayed that Mr. and Mrs. Fenton had heard her warning.

_No. It _is _bad!_ Danny's eyes widened in realization. He took two steps toward the still-open doorway and tackled the Box Ghost to the ground.

* * *

"_Ichi!"_

* * *

The black-cloaked man's tight, sinister grin glinted visibly even in the slowly-lengthening afternoon shadows of the tall building.

Unknown to either of the men, a chain reaction had started. The dominoes had begun to fall. A butterfly flapped its wings on the other side of the world. _A spark had been lit. _If left alone, the spark could grow into a raging inferno.

The Black Organization could never predict the results of their actions. The consequences of this day's work would play true, for the syndicate had forgotten two key sayings of the wise man.

_Look before you leap._

_If you play with fire, you might get yourself burned._

* * *

**Yan:** After much contemplation, Silver Shadowbreeze and the Other Side of the Shadow [me] have finally written. As the plot bunnies are slain, thus are the mountains of writer's block moved. Alone, we are strong. Together, we pass _all _obstacles.

This will be a tale of mystery, adventure, friendship, and history-changing truths and untruths. Thus did the fire begin from a single spark. In this world, _everything_ is possible. _It is only limited by the author's imagination, and to an extent, the reader's as well._

**Shadow:** Enough with the drama, Yan. There was enough of that in this chapter already. Yes, the Two Sides of the Shadow have reconciled and are now writing this fanfiction. Well, more accurately, I [Silver Shadowbreeze] decided to beta for Yan here.

This is a Danny Phantom/Detective Conan crossover. Please keep in mind that I have my own life and will not be able to keep writing with Yan all the time like I wish I could. There will be twists, turns, and several scrapes with canon, unmentioned information, and loopholes. Please stick around for the duration of this hopefully long-lasting fanfiction. Thanks!

**Edits:** 1/23/13 - Changed the conversations to be more characteristic, made the beret scene more Tucker-friendly, fixed some choppy and unnatural wording around Danny's deduction.


	2. Ashes to Ashes

_Out of the frying pan, into the fire._

Through the Fire

Chapter One: Ashes to Ashes

* * *

Chaos broke loose as multiple ear-shattering explosions detonated from the kitchen of Fenton Works. Any screams would have been unheard in the presence of the deafening crash of glass, metal, tile, wood, and every other manner of building material as the construction was simply crushed and smashed to smithereens from the detonation's awesome force.

Flames instantly burst into existence, quickly consuming the surrounding woodwork. Sharp shards of shrapnel hurtled from the origins of the blast, sheering past unprotected flesh and drawing blood. Danny could taste the metallic liquid as it trickled from a cut right below his eye. The teenage ghost fighter heard Jazz scream as a wave of scorching hot air swept over the group.

The rapidly-spreading fire was quickly turning into a small inferno. The teen ghost-fighter could feel the intense heat down the hallway as acutely as he could feel the adrenaline burning through his veins in pure, undiluted terror.

Everything became worse when Danny realized something. "MOM! DAD!" he shouted, heart sinking as he remembered that they had been _in_ the kitchen at the time of the explosion.

As he strained his ears, he thought he caught a faint _"Danny!"_ in answer.

He looked back for one second, heart torn between going further in for his parents and taking his friends and teacher to safety.

Sam caught his gaze, wide-eyed but rather calm compared to her frozen teacher. "Go, Danny! We'll be fine!" she gasped through the steadily spreading smokescreen. The three teens were scrambling for the door on their knees, dragging their catatonic teacher behind them. Danny nodded in self-reassurance. His friends were capable of taking care of themselves.

"Meet by the flagpole three blocks down. If you're not there when I get back, I'm going back in," he replied, blue-white rings sheering over his body. At the affirmative reply, he plunged into the firestorm as Danny Phantom.

Frantically searching the flames for his parents as he ran through the remains of the living room, he coughed as smoke entered his lungs. Eyes watering, he unleashed a splintering wave of ice at the kitchen entrance. The intense flames hissed and sizzled upon contact, easily melting through the temporary defense.

Holding his breath, Danny plunged intangibly through the small gap created by his ice. Coughing, he navigated the fiery passage, punching past all obstructing objects in his path. It wasn't hard to find his parents. "M-mom! Dad!" he choked out through dry lungs, eyes landing on their fallen figures.

"D-Danny," Maddie said weakly from her position underneath her unconscious husband, obviously injured.

Not bothering to think about her lack of reaction to his ghostly appearance, he stumbled over and carefully lifted his dad's arms around his neck, half-dragging him on the scorched floor.

"G-gotta get out of here!" he gasped, watching his mother crawl to her feet. Fueled by adrenaline, Danny picked Maddie up bridal-style while still carrying his dad and rushed toward the wall that was least-populated by the raging fire.

"H-hold your breath!" he snapped out, lunging intangibly through plaster, concrete, glass, and wood on his way to safety. Three walls and five seconds later, Danny burst into fresh air.

He flew with his two passengers partway to the flagpole and gently deposited his father on the ground. Positioning his mother against a wall, the teen ghost fighter shoved his intact cell phone into her hands. "C-call 911, get to the flagpole if you can! I've gotta get everyone else out!" he hissed through his teeth as he felt each and every one of his minor injuries and burns.

From her propped-up position, Maddie gave her son a look that said 'I know what you're doing, young man.' Her gaze softened. "S-stay safe, Danny."

His tense posture relaxed noticeably. "You too. Don't worry, Mom." Turning, he shot off in the direction of the burning building.

A short distance away from the two rescued ghost hunters, the Box Ghost sat up and spat out a gob of ashes and soot. "This is the last time that I, the Box Ghost, will _willingly_ warn the ghost child's family of suspicious shadows behind buildings! BEWARE!" he declared to the sky.

* * *

Danny spotted his best friend half-carrying his sister about a block away from the burning building. "Tucker!" he called. The techno geek looked up and winced slightly at the sight of his friend. Letting gravity take hold of him for a quick and abrupt landing, the teenage ghost hunter stopped his descent in a perfectly balanced crouch. Straightening swiftly, he did a quick inventory of his teammates.

Tucker seemed to be mostly all right considering that he was able to carry Jazz, who was heavier than him, for the distance of one block. A closer look showed that he was limping from a considerably bleeding but shallow gash on his leg. Other than that, though, he was almost completely uninjured beyond minor scratches and burns.

Jazz, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. She was unconscious and seemed completely unaware of the intruders within her personal space bubble, something quite uncharacteristic for her. Though her face was coated with a thin layer of black soot, a shallow cut across her forehead through her hairline bled enough to wash some of it away with a spray of liquid crimson.

Looking around discreetly after discerning that his sister was, in fact, still alive, he noticed something that agitated him. He whirled around to face his friend. "What happened to you guys? Where's Sam and Mr. Lancer?"

Tucker flinched at the question that he knew was coming. "When you left, we made it up to the doorway without a hitch. From there, everything went _very_ wrong. Jazz and Mr. Lancer got knocked out by flying rock shards. I picked up Jazz, but Sam and I couldn't take Mr. Lancer by ourselves even with our combined strength. Sam told me to get help and shoved me and Jazz out the door. That's when a piece of the roof fell and caught my leg. I tried to get back in to help them, but the entrance was completely blocked. I couldn't do anything! My cell phone was useless as scratch, so I was heading to the nearest pay phone to call 911 when you showed up. I did all I could, Danny," he said, bowing his head.

The teen ghost fighter's gaze crystallized. "No need for apologies, Tucker. You did what you could. My parents are partway to the meeting place- I gave them my cell. I'll be back as soon as possible," he said quietly, face devoid of any emotion that his friend could discern.

Tucker looked on worriedly as Danny flew away. The expression would freeze on his face until his teammates and friends returned safely.

* * *

The inferno had nearly completely consumed Fenton Works, already climbing steadily onto the roof toward the solid metal Op Center.

The flames and smoke completely obscured Danny's view as he crawled intangibly through the collapsed entrance. His green eyes burned into the blinding darkness that shrouded the fire.

_They were already near the door when the explosion happened, so where are they now?_ Danny thought, sweating feverishly from the intense heat. _And where are the fire trucks? Even without Mom calling, they should've noticed by now._

He instinctively dodged as a beam fell behind him. A shower of sparks flew up, forcing the teen to shield his face. He hissed as they burned through his soot-covered glove into his hand. Ignoring it, he shook his hand to rid himself of the slowly-cooling cinders.

"Sam! Mr. Lancer!" he called, sweeping the entrance area with his eyes.

"We-we're over here, Danny!" He heard Sam's frantic voice screaming from his right over the roar of the flames. He dove bodily in that direction, holding onto the voice as if it was life itself. Crawling down low below the constantly lowering smoke cloud while groping blindly, the teen shortly came in contact with something. It was Mr. Lancer's shoe! With renewed fervor, Danny continued his search along the fiery route. "Am I close, Sam?" he yelled.

"J-just a… a few more feet! W-we're right in… front of you!" her voice was so close that he could've been imagining it. Her exhaustion was apparent in her tone of voice and gasping sentences. Danny prayed that the roof wouldn't cave in before he got them out. Suddenly, he saw a shape among the flames. He lunged toward it.

"Mr. Lancer!" Danny coughed, seeing his unconscious teacher lying no less than five feet from the door. Judging by the mark on his face, like Tucker had said, the man had been knocked out by a chunk of flying debris.

"Y-you found Mr. Lancer? I-I'm right next to… him. I got… got trapped under-underneath… a fallin-"

"Sam!" Danny cried, hearing her voice fade to nothing over the crackling of the flames as they continued to twist and gyrate across the floors, walls, and ceiling in a macabre dance of destruction, painting the walls with black, sooty drawings of an empty void.

_Why did this happen? How? And in what way is it connected to Sam's reaction to the voice recording?_ He seethed, insides cold.

Gently heaving his overweight teacher onto his back, the teen's eyes glowed light blue as he began to unleash a continuous wave of ice with both of his hands. The fire in the immediate area hissed and convulsed like a live creature, resisting subjugation, before temporarily dying down in a dull gasp of steam and smoke. Keeping up the ice beam with one hand while the other steadied his living cargo, Danny cleared a visible path to his friend's location.

When he caught sight of the Goth girl's position, his thoughts ran wild with fury. Whoever had set of the explosion would pay. Danny knew this was no accident. The evidence was all too clear.

The large piece of debris had fallen across Sam's lower back, effectively pinning her to the spot. She was unconscious, probably because of shock and breathing in the choking smoke. Danny quickly flew over and turned the beam intangible, throwing it aside with careful calculation to release his best friend. She coughed at the release of pressure.

Nodding in grim relief at the knowledge that his friend was alive and breathing, the half-ghost loosed one last ice beam at the nearby wall. As he tumbled intangibly through the cooled-off wall of the searing hot brick and metal structure, getting as far away from the burning building as he could with a last burst of energy, blue-white rings washed over his tired and injured body and turned him back to normal.

Coughing and hacking, he somehow found the strength to drag himself, his friend, and his teacher the three blocks to the flagpole where Tucker was waiting anxiously. The techno geek's posture relaxed slightly when he caught sight of Sam and Mr. Lancer with Danny.

But it wasn't over yet.

Even from this distance, a great screeching of metal pierced their ears. Danny's eyes widened.

_The Op Center!_

He forced himself to transform once more, shooting at top speed towards the dangerous structure that rested atop the unstable burning building. He phased through and frantically began punching controls in- to no avail. The system was unresponsive. It didn't take a second for the half-ghost to use his last option.

Back outside, Danny placed both hands braced to the underside of the metal base, forcing himself to ignore the heat as it rose from below and turned the surface into an enormous frying pan. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face as he began to slowly, painfully, turn the great bulk of the Op Center intangible to release it from its moorings. He screamed as the energy drained from his body. He was nearly running on empty.

The effort was not in vain. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen the Op Center slowly slide down Fenton Works, dragging stone and brick to powder behind it. The building got further crushed under the weight grinding into its supports even as it burned.

_But at least nothing else is getting crushed, _Danny thought faintly_._

The half-ghost's vision blackened for one terrifying second. The great metal jet-blimp hybrid dropped in time with Danny's heart. At the last possible second he regained control of the plummeting hunk of metal, lowering it with a shaky, shuddery crunch on the concrete. The gargantuan task finally accomplished, he sucked in a few deep breaths.

Danny had just enough strength to fly almost back to the flagpole. Collapsing to the ground fully untransformed, he half-stumbled, half-crawled the rest of the way. He watched the smoke over the buildings from a distance, knowing that his former home, filled with so many precious memories, had already started burning to the ground.

It hurt.

Tucker's voice broke his thoughts, bringing him back to the present. "We're all alive, and I'm pretty sure that we're all in stable condition. The ambulance and fire department should be here in a few seconds to pick us up. I'm pretty sure that _someone_ would've been able to call even if a pay phone was unavailable. Who _can't_ notice an explosion like that?"

For some reason, this struck Danny as bizarre. A thought hit him like a baseball bat to the head. "I gave my cell phone to my mom." A thought chilled in his veins and froze with solid fear. "Tucker, did you see my parents?"

_No! Is it possible? The place I dropped them was close. If the guy was watching for people coming out and somehow found them… If the guy was that desperate- no way they could've… no way! The possibility is-_

"Nope, Danny. I didn't see them," the techno geek said seriously, looking up warily from his position on the ground while performing physical inventory on his friends and teacher. "They probably recovered and walked off for help."

Tucker's fear rekindled as his friend's head snapped around, eyes gleaming with renewed terror. "Tucker, my dad was unconscious and my mom was in no condition to run while carrying him. They would never walk off like that without leaving a message. The explosion was no accident. Sam's reaction to the man in the recording… Tuck, someone wanted to kill them!"

Tucker's mouth shut with an audible click. "What are you waiting for, then? Go! I've got everything covered here!"

The teen ghost fighter shook his head gratefully at his friend and ran through his exhaustion, fueled by fear.

_Someone did this on purpose, I just know it! __But who would plant an explosive in my house, and why? __Vlad… no, that would risk killing me and my mom, the top two on his wish list. No one that I know of has both the resources and a grudge against my family unless it was the Guys in White. The Box Ghost said the man was wearing all black, though. The GIW wouldn't stoop so low as to change their uniform._

_Anyone could've hired someone to do this. Gah! It could be an outside source for all I know!_ Danny held his head in frustration. _If whoever it is really wants them dead… If they by any chance at all found them after I dropped them off… Mom, Dad, _please_ be all right._

* * *

Danny stumbled a few more feet, too tired to run any more. It hadn't been _that_ far, only one and a half blocks, but his body felt as if he had run a five-mile marathon over a mountain. The adrenaline had been sapped from him, leaving him totally, truly drained. For now, he found nothing. Every minute without his parents in sight only fueled his fear.

Suddenly, the teen's smoke-clouded eyes caught a glimpse of two things on the ground near the mouth of an alleyway. The first was Tucker's _intact_ palm-held cubical voice recorder which the Box Ghost had by some miracle left behind. Danny pocketed it to return to its owner later.

His heart sank as he picked up the second item and examined it. The crushed pieces of metal and glass in his hand were the remains of his cell phone! Judging by its position, someone had dashed on the nearby wall to forcefully destroy it.

_No! Please, no! Please be safe! Please be alive when I find you! _His hand clenched around the shattered remnants of his phone. He ignored the pain when blood dripped from a cut on his palm. Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming in his direction from the opposite end of the nearby alley. Danny instinctively went invisible and stepped backwards through the adjacent wall.

As they came nearer, almost in front of him, a pair of heavier footsteps joined the first. They seemed to pause for a moment. Danny invisibly peered from the wall to look. His heart nearly stopped in his mouth.

Two black-cloaked men wearing black fedoras on their heads stood directly before him, half-turned away. Upon looking at their partly obscured faces, Danny would've charged one of his more intense green-white ecto rays at them on some unknown reflex. But drained of energy, it was all he could do to keep control of his invisibility. Shaking in fury and fear, he had to physically hold his arm back from doing so. A chill washed through his body as one of the men leaned on the wall next to his invisible head. And though he couldn't fully see their faces, over the upturned coat collar, he saw it.

_Th-those eyes… I've never seen such cold lack of emotion like that! It's like they could do any despicable thing in the world and feel nothing! J-just like with Dan, but they__…_ they're humans!_  
_

Everything about them screamed intimidation, from their slightly raised shoulders and solid stances to their cold eyes and choice of clothing. Danny shivered, already knowing from experience that their voices matched their appearance.

The taller man with long, pale blonde hair _almost silver_ spoke to his apparent partner in, according to Sam, Japanese. As the shorter, heavyset man with dark hair replied in the same language, Danny recognized his voice as the same as the one on the recording. On that train of thought, inspiration struck. He quickly clicked Tucker's voice recorder on.

"…_That man believed that they would become annoyances in the future."_

"_Yes… they know Masters-san, correct, aniki?"_

The long-haired man's eyes narrowed. _"We cannot remove him at the moment. He is too prominent for it to escape suspicion. We had to be content with removing the Fentons. It did not matter if their children were caught in the explosion. Leader's instructions said to remove the older Fentons no matter who was with them."_

The other snorted. _"Yes, they did put up quite a fight even with the poison. We probably would've worried if they were at full strength, ne, aniki?"_

A cold smirk adorned his face. _"You are lucky I'm in a good mood right now. I'm actually answering these irrelevant questions."  
_

The two laughed mirthlessly at some twisted joke as they left the alley.

Danny exhaled a breath that he hadn't known he'd been holding. Losing sight of the men in black, the teen ran further down the alley through sheer willpower. Hot tears of anger formed behind his eyes. Even though he couldn't understand most of the conversation, he'd heard his family and Vlad mentioned. Even worse, he could see dull stains against the dark sheen of the taller man's outer coat.

_Definitely blood… Vlad couldn't have hired those men. From what I could make out, they seem to want to kill_ him_ more than they wanted to kill Mom and Dad! And if they're leaving now, they might've finished their job. That means… No! I-I won't accept that!_ He shook his head furiously.

He limped down the alley, previous caution thrown to the wind. He saw signs of a struggle; scuff marks and dents littered the path, scoring right down his direction of choice. The men in black had somehow tracked the Fentons down after Danny left. The crushed the phone was a clue- if it had been used, someone would've come to help by now.

_I should've taken them further!_

Since Danny's dad had been unconscious, his mom had definitely defended her husband. She probably tried to move both herself and Jack to a more protected area as she fought. However, in her injured and weakened condition, she was nowhere near top form. Though she would have gotten in a few good hits, the men would have eventually been able to overpower her. After that…

Danny tried to deny it, but all evidence pointed to his worst fears being true. It was confirmed when he spotted a hint of blue around a corner. He half-skidded around the bend. "Mom! Dad!" he cried, stumbling over the rough concrete to collapse next to his parents' limp forms for the second time that day.

He checked his mom's pulse. It was erratic, but it was still there. The teen ghost fighter nearly cried in relief. His mother was obviously not in stable condition, but she was still alive. Blood trickled steadily from a wound on her head. She had various small cuts and minor bruises from the fire and self-defense against the men in black, but those would heal after time.

Danny's tense shoulder muscles loosened slightly as he moved to check his father's pulse only for his movement to be stopped by a slender hand. He looked up in shock.

"D-don't bother, Danny… Jack… he's gone… It's too late for… both of us. Th-they poisoned us…" Maddie coughed, blood splashing on the ground.

"M-mom…"

"No time, Danny_…_" she admonished gently. "Your secret… I… _we_ knew for… only a month… W-we called you while… fighting Phantom… _you_… You had… that unmistakable ringtone…" she whispered.

"Th-that's when you stopped… stopped showing at my fights…" Danny breathed in shocked realization. He buried his head in his soot-covered hands. "I shouldn't have left you here! I could've–"

Maddie's deep blue eyes softened as she looked at her youngest child. "No, you had to go… you had to save the-them… They would've died… Danny, I'm… proud of you… remember that…"

The teenage ghost fighter's eyes flashed green, face grief-stricken as it dawned upon him exactly what was happening. His home and half his family… taken from him in one strike like a candle flame in the wind. "W-when I catch up with those… those men, I'll… I'll kill them!" he snarled.

A hand closed over the boy's shaking fists. "N-no, Danny…" Maddie reprimanded softly. "I know… you're- you're better than that… D-don't become like… those men… serve justice, not revenge… remember? 'If revenge is a dish best served cold…'"

"'Then justice is the main meal served before it,'" Danny finished, tears falling freely.

Maddie reached up shakily, resting her hand in her son's dark hair and ruffling it gently, like she always had before. "T-take care of your sister… _everyone…_ Give my love to Jazz… Don't worry, Danny… Everything's gonna be all right…"

Her eyes glimmered like twin sapphires as she smiled, gazing for the last time at the face of the one she had finally come to terms with. "D-don't cry, my Danny boy… I don't like to… see you sad…"

Danny choked back the tears even as they continued to stream down his face. He held her hand even as it slowly dropped from his hair, down his wet cheeks, then finally_…_ to the ground. "Mom," he whispered, words echoing across the broken scene of his parents' last stand. The curtain fell sorrowfully over their last battle as they fought to the end, together even in death. His lips slowly formed the words of a nearly silent promise, both to himself and his mother. "I'll try…"

_I'll try to keep smiling, Mom…_

He never noticed as sirens resounded faintly in the background even as they neared his location. As his world was enshrouded in red and white, the emotional stress coupled with physical exhaustion crashed full force on his body and spirit in a head-splitting wave. He slept.

* * *

**Yan:** You probably want to kill me for killing off Danny's parents and (wince) hurting everyone else, but it's necessary for plot advancement. We had a hard time on this chapter since we both hate killing the characters on-screen (but we somehow end up doing it anyway. Eh, that's just about it for now. Arigato (bows) for reading thus far. Hopefully, you'll still love both us and the story. If it turns out that you _hate_ us but _still_ love the story, then we can still honestly say that we're doing our job. Please let us live, though.

**Shadow:** Sorry for helping Yan kill off Danny's parents and put Jazz and Sam out of commission temporarily, but Danny needs extra incentive to go after the mysterious bad guys… ones that he never knew about until now. As for how Gin and Vodka found Danny's parents after Danny carted them off… remember that Gin was watching for people coming in and going out. In the last chapter, he told Vodka to join him to keep watch after the fire was started. The rest, they say, is history. They knew nothing more about the Fentons than their names and being a possible threat. Neither of the two believe in ghosts.

**Edits: **1/23/13 - Fixed some unnatural wording and logic, removed name references, added Op Center scene.


	3. Test Summary

_The fire rushes as burning gold, across the twilit horizon…_

Through the Fire

Chapter Two: Test Summary

* * *

Danny woke up in a hospital room. His head pounded with a fierce headache, bringing with it all the memories of the recording, the fire, the deaths of his parents, and… of all evil things, flashbacks with his semi-encounter with the men in black, the ones who were responsible for this. He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. Forcibly turning his thoughts back to the present, he looked around the room with the blankness of someone who was quite used to waking up in a similar setting.

_How could everything go so wrong? When everything was so right, how could it go wrong?_

In the blinding whiteness of the room, Danny's bed was placed on the far left side, facing the wall. Tucker was asleep on the adjacent bed in the middle, red beret askew and somehow-intact PDA in hand. Sam lay, unconscious or sleeping, the teen couldn't tell, in a bed on the room's far right, Jazz in the one across from her. Danny sighed, blowing his hair out of his face as he subconsciously propped himself up, settling into a half-sitting position deep into the spotless fluffy pillow.

His dulled blue eyes stared forward blankly at the light of dawn that filtered through the open blinds of a window on the right side of the room. It had been late in the afternoon when the explosion occurred. "Happy birthday to me," he whispered bleakly into the breathing-punctuated silence of the thrice-occupied room.

_I'll never be able to forget what happened. How could I? If I forget… _he shuddered. _Sorry, Mom, Dad. For now, I can't keep my promise._

Salt tears splashed onto the pure white sheets, leaving marks of gray, a color of sorrow and pain. The storm could no longer be held back. The torrent gushed forth, all inward agony and held-back emotion poured out, refreshing the spirit and mind of its source anew. All barriers broken down and all masks lowered in the moment, Danny allowed himself to hold nothing back for one last time.

He cried for his lost parents.

He wept for what could've been.

He mourned his inability to protect those he held dear.

He sorrowed, for he knew nothing would be the same ever again.

_Never again._

After his mental dams snapped back into place over the outbreak of emotion, Danny felt better than he had in months. His mind was a lot clearer than before. The teen slowly brushed his tear-streaked face, settling back to think about his situation.

_Clockwork can't do anything. If there's one thing I've learned from messing with the timelines, it's that the past can be learned from, but it's the_ present_ that affects the future. I can only look forward. I'm not the only one at stake this time._

He glanced to his right slightly guiltily, though he knew that he had nothing to do with his friends' injuries. Danny sighed, running a hand through messy black hair.

_If I don't track those guys down and put them where they should be, more people could get killed. You would've died for nothing. Sorry Mom, but I can't promise that revenge won't be involved._

The teen ghost fighter clenched his fists into the snowy white sheets. He would undoubtedly do anything he needed to do to apprehend the men who killed his parents. His hands loosened.

_But I can't! The recording might be evidence, but… we have nothing else. They did this in broad daylight. They don't fear getting caught. Why? Because… because they know they can get out of it._

His eyes narrowed. _An inside job? It would certainly explain why help took so long to come. That means… we can't even trust the authorities?!_

The half-ghost took a moment to think that over, a serious expression on his face. …_I'll go after them. I have to. After I find a detective who'd be willing to teach me and I gain a reasonable amount of skill, I'll use my only lead, no matter how slim it might be, and go after them_ personally.

Danny had no way of knowing just how soon his chance would come.

After an impromptu and unappetizing hospital breakfast served by a random unnamed nurse followed by several rotations of "patrol nurses", as Team Phantom called them, Danny finally got a general feel for their entrance times. Thankfully, he remembered a tip from Sam on how to successfully fool a nurse into thinking that he was asleep. This let him avoid a whole lot of their fussing over him, though he knew that Tucker probably wouldn't mind. Then again, the techno geek had a chronic fear of hospitals.

_Hii-i-i-i-i-i-i…_

Danny heard the door creak inward. He cracked an eye open, mentally raising an eyebrow in slight confusion. Nurses never appeared twice in quick succession.

A look of understanding, a good bit of annoyance, and a glimmer of anger surfaced on his face when the identity of his visitor was made clear. Nothing in the teen's visible expression betrayed the true extent of his feelings in that moment, but if one looked closely, they would notice the teen's narrowed eyes glowing a dangerous green.

"Go away, Vlad. If you haven't noticed, _I'm not in the mood._ If you want the Packers, get them yourself. If you want to admit that you're a lonely old fruit loop who needs a cat, be my guest- the cat is completely paid for and waiting at the pet shop. If you want me to dance on my father's grave with you, you'll be crippled for the rest of your half-life. And if you want to marry my mom, well, _you're too late,_" he ended in a hiss, his voice lowered to a lethal pitch.

The visitor was indeed Danny's lone arch enemy, Vlad Masters. The suit-wearing prematurely-gray man seemed almost taken aback at the younger half-ghost's tone, actually pausing at the doorway before his steps took him to the teenager's side. Instead of looming over him as he usually would, the man sat in the bedside chair. When he spoke, Danny was almost shocked into silence.

"Daniel, I know what you're thinking. On the contrary, I had _nothing _to do with this." The billionaire's normally smug tone was completely subdued, almost defeated. It was something that none of the members of Team Phantom had ever imagined would show in the old fruit loop. His head was bowed. Lines creased on his face, accenting the dark circles under his eyes. He looked tired, as if he'd been through as many years as his hair color suggested.

"…I know," the teen replied quietly after a tight pause, allowing some of his muscles to relax as some of the anger receded from his form. "It wasn't your style. It couldn't have been you," Danny elaborated quickly, seeing the surprise on the man's face.

_Nothing that I saw points to Vlad. He didn't do it. Those- those men in black, _they're _the guilty ones._

Danny looked his former arch enemy over discreetly. _He looks like he has the guilt of ten people on his shoulders. I might not like him, but I don't like seeing people hurt._

"Daniel, I-I…" the normally composed man hesitated.

Danny exhaled impatiently. "Vlad, I don't need pity from anyone at the moment, least of all from you. I need information. Assuming that the police got there and you know something about it, what did they find out? What caused the explosion?" he asked calmly.

_Come on, I know that you know something._

Vlad shifted uncomfortably under the young man's icy-but-thawing gaze. "From what the police could discern from the scene, the accident was caused by the gas in the ground floor stove and oven igniting through contact with an unstable experiment. Why the sudden need for details, Daniel?"

At that reply, the temperature in the room immediately dropped, causing everyone in the room besides Danny to shiver consciously and otherwise. If the young ghost fighter's voice had been icy before, it was downright _frigid _now. His hair shadowed his face as all of his suspicions and fears were confirmed.

_So that's what happened. It's a simple method, untraceable if done right. Those men released a nearly-scentless gas into the kitchen, the central part of the house. That's the strange scent I smelled earlier. The closed oven would be a logical place to start since the gas would pressurize and slowly spread through the cracks into the rest of the house._

_If my theory is right, they have men on the inside who kept the first responders from showing until the gas burned out, long before an investigative team could arrive._

_They somehow triggered a spark or flame when everyone was inside to create an accident scene instead of a murder scene. Depending on what trigger they used, no traces would be found. Besides the recording, that leaves pretty much no solid evidence!_

The teen's hands clenched into fists. His fingernails dug into his palms and reopened old cuts, drawing blood. "It was no accident, Vlad. It was murder. Someone killed my parents and hurt my sister, my friends, and my teacher, and I'm going to find out who they are and what they want."

"Murder? What makes you so sure?" the billionaire questioned carefully. The man blinked hard, shivering slightly. Was it his imagination, or was there _frost _creeping over the bed sheets?

The teen bit his lip, trying to decide how much information he should give to his 'uncle'. _I shouldn't tell him about the men in black or anything involving them- at least not_ now._ He'd ask questions that I don't know if I can answer. Still, even though I don't care for him at all, I wouldn't really want to see him dead. He may be of some help, anyway._ Danny nodded to himself.

"Two things. One, before the explosion, Mom told me that she and Dad had just finished cleaning up their experiments. She always cleans the kitchen first, so she would've noticed if there was a stray experiment nearby. Two, none of our kitchen machinery are gas-powered. They're all _ecto-powered_. The culprit obviously didn't know that, or he would know that ectoplasm _doesn't ignite._ They set this up to look like an accident!" the teen's blue eyes flashed. He forced himself to back down and breathe, forcing his abilities back under control.

Vlad stared at the young man, relaxing unconsciously as heat steadily seeped back into the room. "What are you planning, Daniel?" he asked cautiously.

A wry smirk appeared on Danny's face at the question. _Hey, fruit loop, that's _my_ line! But since you asked so nicely, I'll tell you my spur-of-the-moment but solid plan. Here's to hoping that you're gonna go along with it._

"'What am I planning,' huh? A better question is 'What will I _do_,'" the younger half-ghost paused. "…It all depends on you, actually. The longer I wait, the colder the trail will get until it's impossible to clear the record. I need to be trained as a detective , Vlad. You have connections. I _know_ you know someone who can help me. _Don't_ hire one yourself," the young ghost fighter stated, seeing Vlad about to protest.

Seeing as he'd held back the interruption, Danny explained, "I'm the only available first-hand witness who has the ability to do this since Mom and Dad were killed. We're just _meddling troublesome teens with big imaginations_ to the police, remember? No one else would believe me if I told them it was a murder. I'm willing to overlook the majority of our past history if you'll do just this one thing for me. If I don't do this, more innocent people could get killed, not just my parents. I _need_ to do it!" he said intensely, his gaze burning into the eyes of his former arch enemy.

Vlad opened his mouth opened to argue only to shut it just as quickly. His tired face and slumped shoulders showed signs of his reluctant but relieved desire of resignation. He nodded swiftly before he could stop himself. "If only to make up for past history, I'll do it. Make no mistake, Daniel, even though I hated your father and used my powers for myself, I've never killed anybody. Doing nothing to stop the culprit would be as bad as if I were the one who killed his next target. I'll help you because of Maddie… and- and Jack," he conceded wearily.

A small but sincere smile formed on Danny's face. "Never thought I'd live to see you say that," he muttered quietly. Straightening, he became serious again, though the tenseness of before had completely shattered like the breaking of a window. _Or the ice melting- literally, but he doesn't need to know that, _he added mentally.

"So, you have any good connections?" the teen asked, getting to the point.

_There's no way he has anything_ more_ than connections if he's such a hermit._

The atmosphere lightened further. "As a matter of fact, yes, Daniel. A contact of mine, Chief Inspector Hakuba, lives in Japan, but his son lives overseas in England. He's a rather impressive detective in his own right. He has more than enough experience to help you. If I remember correctly, the boy's name was Hakuba Saguru. Or was it Saguru Hakuba? Ah, these Japanese names get confusing…"

"Japanese?" the black-haired teenager blinked. "It'll be _really_ convenient if I can learn Japanese at the same time as criminal investigation. I guess it won't hurt asking." He scratched the side of his neck thoughtfully. "Hm, he's a detective who lives in England, so he's definitely heard of Sherlock Holmes. I'm not a crazed fan, but it's something to talk about."

"You have no idea, Daniel," Vlad replied dryly.

Oh yes, the two should get along _just_ fine.

* * *

Half a day later, Danny was secretly discharged from the hospital through Vlad's influence. Also thanks to the billionaire, he was due to depart on a flight to England on that same day. He'd only had few scant hours to pack what little he still owned. Vlad provided the necessities like clothes and toiletries- Danny wouldn't accept anything more than that.

The teen tugged the bill of his new dark blue cap over his eyes as he walked towards his flight through the outdoors. He didn't kno_w_ the agenda of those men and their mysterious shadow group, but he _did _know what evil looked like. He knew they wouldn't hesitate to destroy him and his friends if they knew they survived. No amount of safety precaution was unnecessary.

Danny knew in his heart that he would never see his hometown again until this was all over. It was inevitable.

_Home…_ the teen reflected on the word. _If home truly is where the heart is, then where is mine?_ The silence of the twilight provided no answer to the unspoken question. Danny raised a hand to run it through his hat-covered hair but stopped at the last second, remembering not to. He fidgeted slightly in his new short-sleeve dark green shirt, dark blue jacket, and khaki pants.

_Fenton Works _was_ my home, but what made it that? An empty house is just that- a house. It's the family that lives in a house that makes it a home._ He listened to the sound of his slow, unsteady footfalls, each one bringing him a step further away from the one place he'd ever known.

…_Mom and Dad made that place home, but now that they're gone, where _is _home?_ The air remained still, any response inaudible. Danny sighed, shaking his head to clear it.

_There's absolutely no doubt that Sam, Tucker, and Jazz are family, if not more than that._ His regular breathing echoed in his ears as he thought this over.

_Now that I think about it… my heart is with them now. So that means… my home is wherever they are, huh?_

He paused in his footsteps at that conclusion. _Woah. I've never thought about it like that before._

Looking back over his shoulder with a look of longing barely hidden behind a calm facade, he smiled slightly. _Sorry for leaving home so soon, guys, but I promise I'll be back for you wherever you are. Stay safe! I need a home to come back to!_

He resumed his walk, striding determinedly forward. The halfway-dropping sun reflected in his eyes, seemingly mirroring the blue sky within them. The teen looked upward and grinned, flashing a quick thumbs-up at the clear expanse above. _You see this smile, Mom, Dad? We'll get through this. I promise!_

Danny left without looking back again. Such was the deep faith he had in his friends.

Several miles away in a certain room of a particular hospital, four adjacent empty beds sat silently, giving no indication of what had occurred several hours previously. The hospital staff would later discover these vacancies, but they would be ignored- their occupants had already been _legally_ discharged. Perhaps a tear or two was shed, or a head or two shaken in regret. Their files now read "deceased", after all. Masters himself had seen that they were whisked away before reporters could surface. That is another story, however.

A closer look would throw light on a small trashcan next to the three beds. An innocent-looking piece of paper lay soaked, shredded, and crumpled at the bottom, revealing nothing yet showing everything. If one picked the pieces up and pieced them together correctly (impossible in their wet and lumpy state), they would see the unhidden contents of the simple notepaper, a message only understandable to those informed of its dealings.

_To my team:_

_If you're reading this, I've already left. You can trust the fruit loop– he knows where I'm going. For now till we come up with something better, communication is by air. Unfortunately that means you too, Techie, even with your awesome security work. Be careful and watch out for foreign ravens. Till we meet again!_

_Fire burns, but so does the will to live._

_-Team leader, First In_

* * *

**Yan:** Happy birthday, Kaito! Happy birthday, Aoyama Gosho! Happy Father's Day if you're a dad! Happy first day of summer (summer solstice) to you in the Northern Hemisphere! Happy winter solstice (first day of winter?) to you in the Southern Hemisphere! If our calculations from date references in Magic Kaito are correct, then Kaito was born on June 21, 1974. That would make him thirty-five years old today if he was real. Blink, seriously. You DID just read that.

Don't forget to check out Shadow's oneshot, Summer Solstice, in our joint profile (this one). I believe that Shadow put all heart and soul into writing it, seriously!

**Shadow: **Through a beta's-eye view, I think we did a really good job on this chapter. Things seemed to flow quite nicely for us in writing (don't know about in reading since we're biased). Danny figured it out because he remembered several details. You can see in the first chapter that he smelled "a really strange smell" coming from the kitchen. Also, Maddie said she'd already cleaned up. The Fentons' kitchen appliances _are_ ecto-powered. My research says that ectoplasm doesn't ignite. Add to the fact that Danny's instincts were screaming _'This- is- murder- it- was- those- men!'_ (confirmed by his mom), then you get the answer.

**Edits:** 1/23/13 - Streamlined the conversation with Vlad to be more natural, Jazz is now in the same room, Danny cries longer and with more emotion and reason, and the note was rewritten to be more understandable, simple, and logical to the characters.


	4. Test Tutorial

_The rush, the adrenaline, the fire within… it calls… it knows my name…_

Through the Fire

Chapter Three: Test Tutorial

* * *

**4:38 A.M. - London, England**

The plane from _British Airways_ coasted landward through the considerable air traffic overhead. Though it was still dark, the airport lights were bright enough to illuminate a clear way to the landing terminal. The great metal bird landed with a slight bump, gently jostling the passengers from their flight-induced slumber as the pilot skillfully directed his aircraft for a coasting landing.

A certain black-haired teen yawned, stretching his legs from their state of inactivity. _Wow, that flight was really boring. The movies were tacky and the food was tasteless. The bathroom really needs to get cleaned, too, _he thought, all sleep-related feelings quickly disappearing. Danny had only left Illinois seven hours ago, but he was already feeling slightly homesick. The feeling was quickly being overridden by his growing excitement at visiting a new country, though.

Danny pressed through his grief at losing his parents by burning into his memory his small but sincere promise to them. _Smile._

Team Phantom had many physical masks and mental shields; it took less than a heartbeat for them to pull up one or more of either if needed. In their secret nighttime patrols, these mental defenses had saved their lives more than once. It was rare that they ever completely lowered their masks around people outside their small group. The team's trust was hard for anyone to gain in its entirety, but once gained, the friendship was almost guaranteed to never break. Danny missed his friends terribly– at times it felt his heart would burst.

They had other things to take care of, though. _Like recovering. They have my note, but I wish I could've said goodbye. Hopefully they'll understand why I left on such short notice. I'll call them later._

Though the teen ghost fighter would never admit it when asked, the surfacing of old nervous traits had made the flight more eventful than he made himself think. One humorous example was when the flight attendants came to serve drinks. His seatmates– both first-time flyers– hadn't needed to ask for ice cubes; both their sodas had frozen solid in the process of being poured. Danny's cup of water had simply splashed all over the pull-out table due to the bottom of said container suddenly and inexplicably ceasing to exist. The water somehow missed Danny and left him dry. Of course, his fellow passengers had passed this off as something caused by the high altitude.

Later, though, the observers of the previously-stated phenomenon watched in interested horror when their food and eating utensils literally disappeared and reappeared before their eyes. Noticing, Danny had quickly cut off his abilities. He was too late, though, to prevent the passengers' chicken and pasta dinners blowing up in their faces. Strangely, his own dinner had remained intact aside from several scorch marks on the side of his chicken.

His seatmates had merely turned to him in slight terror, edging away from him subconsciously. At the time, he'd shrugged and played innocent. However, when the two passengers began to complain to the flight attendant about the air condition being too cold when it was quite obviously switched off, Danny decided that enough was enough.

The teen resorted to his most useful and portable version of stress relief. He pulled out a deck of cards and swiftly and efficiently began to shuffle them over. This was a method of stress relief suggested by Sam when he'd first had problems with the balance between his abilities and his emotions. The endless motion of cards folding and curving over each other, dissolving into multiple patterns of movement, colors, suits, and numbers – it calmed the teen ghost fighter's anxiety and increased his subconscious control over his innate abilities like nothing else did.

Granted, he really only used the bridge shuffle, but the feeling of speed between his fingers as the cards flipped, the different sounds and sensations created… it was _satisfying_ in a way that he couldn't explain.

The teenage ghost fighter completely calmed down after ten minutes. Tiring of shuffling, he'd begun sorting the cards by suit and value from spades to diamonds. Danny's seatmates calmed after no other strange things happened, relaxing enough to sleep for the rest of the flight. Danny had glanced over at them and decided to follow their lead instead of toying with the yo-yo he'd bought before the flight. It would've lead to disastrous occurrences in cramped quarters, anyway.

Because of his night job, the black-haired teen was an extremely light sleeper. Upon landing, he had no trouble waking up completely energized and ready to go. This brings us to the present time, the plane's landing.

Danny glanced at the seat-belt light. Thankfully, it was off. Unbuckling, he carefully stood and arched his body backwards to crack his spine. He laughed mentally when his seatmates winced at his show of flexibility. _Hey, I want to be in top shape so I can make it to where I'm gonna stay, right?_ The energy rush he was receiving was more effective than any cup of coffee. He almost literally shot out of the plane when the doors opened.

Behind him, his two fellow passengers breathed identical sighs of relief and sagged back into their seats. "I don't know… Aye, he might be a good kid, but aye, I'm glad his stop's not in Ireland," one of them breathed. The other simply nodded in fervent agreement.

Upon making it through passport check, Danny energetically jogged around the airport, dodging passerby and trying to work off some nervousness while looking for his guide, or whatever he was called. Truthfully, the black-haired teen had no idea where he was supposed to meet the guy. Hey, it was his first _piloted _flight. Personally piloting a spaceship and flying without the aid of such (both of which he'd done) didn't count.

Other than thinking and talking to himself, there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. Danny was seriously regretting not bringing his friends with him. The bond between them was almost tangible- so strong was their friendship. It truly hurt to be away from them. He'd never been away from his team longer than he absolutely needed to- never longer than a week. And now, he was leaving them voluntarily, possibly for _years._

_The urgency of the situation wasn't enough, was it? I have to add guilt to it as well. Now what?_

An answer almost literally fell from the sky. "Get outta the waaaaaayy! Aahhh! Oof!"

"Oww…" Danny reflexively rolled over and pinned down whatever or whoever had crashed into him. After recovering his wits and evaluating what happened, the teen got a good look at his assailant. He subsequently smacked his forehead.

"Uhh, happy belated birthday?" his 'attacker' said, grinning weakly.

"You're kidding me, right?" Danny groaned, staring at his best friend with a mixture of disbelief, relief, and uncertainty. "What are you doing here, Tucker? Not that I'm not happy to see you, but-"

"Me too, dude. What were you _thinking,_ going by yourself unprepared?" It was indeed the techno genius who collided with Danny. As the two picked themselves up, Tucker explained himself.

"I was awake during your whole exchange with Vlad. Do you really think that I'd go to sleep in a _hospital_? When you fell asleep after Vlad left, I found my recorder on the nightstand and listened to it on my PDA language translator just like _you_ did. We know _everything_. If you're going after dangerous people like that – let alone an entire mafia-style _organization_ of them– well, there's safety in numbers, right?" Tucker offered. His smile was noticeably subdued.

Danny couldn't quite figure what he was feeling at the moment. "Tuck, you're a lifesaver! I- how did you get here, anyway? Is everyone else all right? I mean, you left them behind, not that I didn't too… and-"

The techno geek grimaced, waving a hand to stop Danny's tirade. "Woah, slow down! I got here in the same plane that you did. Actually, I was about three rows behind you. I passed you a few times on the way to the bathroom."

Danny stared. "That guy hiding behind the huge National-Daily newspaper was _you_?"

Tucker nodded. "You really terrified the people next to you with your 'random events'. Hey, you even broke out the cards! You nervous?" He grinned at his friend's reaction. "Yeah, me too. Anyway, both Jazz and Sam are awake. They're both hopping mad you left like that, by the way."

The half-ghost shifted uneasily.

"Mr. Lancer is fine too," Tucker continued, straightening his beret carefully. "Jazz and Sam got transferred to one of Vlad's vacation houses while I did the… cover work." The techno geek winced slightly, something that Danny, with his improved observation skills, didn't miss.

"What did you do, Tucker?" the teen ghost fighter asked seriously.

Tucker shifted uncomfortably. "I read your note. After discussing the recording with Jazz and Sam, I did just what I _knew _I should do. As of yesterday, Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton, Jazz Fenton, and Sam Manson… are dead." He took a shaky breath.

"My family, Vlad, and Sam's grandmother are the only ones who know the half of the truth. Sam's family still thinks that she's in Europe since we never told them that she was staying at her grandma's place. They have no idea that she was in the explosion, nor will they or anyone else ever find out, thanks to me. All records related to that were wiped clean of those details.

"When school comes around, they'll think that Sam transferred to a private school in England- I know they love her, but it's something that they won't look into. You know how they've been trying to make her go there. Jazz will just go to college under her new 'legal' records. And since you left for detective training and I followed…" He paused, looking for words. "I-I know that we've broken the law before, but never this deliberately. Even if it's for us to stay alive, it's… it feels so _wrong_." The tech genius's voice trailed off.

Danny put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "When it comes to choosing between the obeying the law and doing what you know is right, it's hard, isn't it?" he murmured.

Though neither of the two could truly say they knew what the other was feeling, simply knowing they weren't alone anymore was enough for now.

* * *

"So if I Danny doesn't exist anymore, then who does?" the teen ghost fighter asked the techno geek after they recovered from their dual reality check. After quickly shrugging their backpacks back on, they started through the airport together.

Tucker rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. "Look at your passport. Who did you think made it? Vlad? I don't think so. He doesn't know the meaning of the word 'subtle'. I mean seriously, he dresses like Dracula in his spare time! Take a good long look and memorize that name, dude, 'cause it'll be yours for as long as you need it. You might even be stuck with it for the rest of your known life."

"That doesn't sound too good. Wait, you…" Danny paused to think of his next words. _Forgery _is _a useful skill, though, however illegal it might be._ With that thought, the legally-deceased teen fished out his passport. "Wow. This is _really _good," he stated, eyeing it critically.

"I don't know whether to be flattered or horrified," Tucker replied dryly. Danny winced. "I slipped it to Vlad to give to you before you left. You wouldn't have gotten off the ground otherwise." Danny raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"…Fine. You _would've _gotten off the ground, but you would've been exhausted and the plane would've beaten you by more than a mile by the time you landed," Tucker amended. "So that's what your name's gonna be among others. We'll use mutually-known code names for any form of contact between us, but face-to-face while in private, we're still ourselves. In the real world, Sam is now Sam Mansfield, Jazz is Jasmine Fenway, and mine is Takeru Yamada just 'cause."

"Man, Tucker… That's more than once that you've saved our necks! Don't listen to yourself- you really are a genius."

Tucker shifted a foot modestly, secretly smiling behind the back of his hand. "Thanks, Danny. Back on topic, we would've been all Japanese names. In the end though, we figured it would be weird since we mostly don't look it 'cept you. There are only so many foreign-looking people who can claim ancestry or adoption before it starts looking suspicious. Your sister has a different last name from you because, quote," he cleared his throat, voice rising several octaves in pitch, "'Danny and I look nothing alike, and the harder it is for someone to connect us through family relations, the better.'"

The techno geek inhaled deeply at the end of his piece, enjoying the look on his friend's face at his accurate impersonation of the aspiring psychologist. "I picked your name. It was the closest I could get to the original without sticking you with a girl's name or… that name we gave to _that_ guy. They're close so that if we accidentally call each other by our real names, we can say they're just nicknames."

The black-haired teen filed this information off mentally for future reference, shrugging it off for the moment. "Thanks for that, Tuck. What you did is definitely more than nothing, seriously!"

Though it wasn't visible through his dark skin, he colored slightly at the praise. "I do what I can, dude," Tucker grinned.

Someone cleared their throat loudly from behind. "Excuse me, but are you the two that I'm supposed to be training?" a clipped English voice questioned.

The two teen ghost fighters whirled around, caught totally off guard- they nearly slid into their respective defensive stances before sighting the speaker. There was an awkward pause between both sides as they gathered their wits.

"…"

"…"

"…Sorry, what were you saying?" Danny asked behind a straight face, nudging Tucker with one foot to focus him. The tech genius's face was rapidly turning red from lack of air supply. He looked ready to burst at any second. At Danny's prompt, though, he forced himself to swallow his laughter, schooling his dark features.

The object of their humor was the blond, average-height English teen with slightly slanted eyes and miniscule differences in his angle of facial features that decided a bit of Asian in his ancestry. He held a small picture of Danny and Tucker for identification. His stance was relaxed but extremely balanced, suggesting that he may have had some formal training in self-defense. However, that's where the normalcy ended.

_Never mind what Vlad said about him being a _fan_ of Sherlock, he's gotta be _obsessed!_ I mean seriously, how many people do you see walking around_ _dressed like that- Inverness, deerstalker, and all? Sure, I like those books, but I'd never_ dress_ like that!_

"Are you the two that I'm supposed to meet?" the Sherlockian teen repeated, scratching the back of his head underneath his deerstalker cap.

Danny took it upon himself to reply, seeing as his companion was in no polite condition to do so. "…Y-yeah. I'm the one who's going to be learning criminal investigation. Tu- _he_ tagged along at the last second. I'm guessing he has a plan, though," he said, remembering the identity issue at the last second. The techno geek nodded behind a straight face.

"Great, then," the teenage detective said, a tone of relief barely audible beneath the collected calmness. "No doubt you already know, but I'm Hakuba Sa- ah, I mean Saguru Hakuba. You may call me either Saguru or Hakuba, whichever you prefer. If you're really determined to learn, you will be staying at my house for the next few years. It will be hard, but we are under no time restraints save for school days and work days. The time you spend with me depends on your dedication and personal progress. On the off chance that it becomes too difficult for you, you are free to leave," he finished professionally.

Danny tucked the information away for future thought. _No way I'm gonna break and leave _this _time._ His lips curved into a smile at the thought. He offered his hand to the teenage detective. "Sounds fair," he said with a smile. "I'm Yan Shigawa, an aspiring detective. This guy here is…"

Tucker perked up slightly. "Takeru Yamada, tech genius extraordinaire," he stated proudly, grinning at his friend's slightly exasperated expression. 'Yan' shook his head at 'Takeru' in admonishment, to which was returned a contrite expression.

Saguru shook both teens' hands respectively, raising an eyebrow at the firmness in each of their handshakes. "Forgive me, but I wasn't expecting either of you to be of Japanese descent. I don't suppose you speak it?"

Danny shook his head. "No, not yet. We were hoping we could find a teacher somewhere along the line, actually."

The detective winced. "Currently, I remain as the only _competent_ speaker nearby since _Chichiue-_ that is, my _father_, is off in Japan and _Hahaue-_ my _mother_ is often abroad. You can learn from me, but it'll cut into your studies a bit."

Danny shifted, elbowing Tucker slightly. "That's fine. We're planning on heading for Japan anyway, so it's better we learn sooner rather than later." The techno genius nodded in agreement and yawned, not possessing the same inbuilt energy that his friend did.

The detective started at that. "Right, you're probably tired from your flight. I should get you to my place."

The two teenage ghost fighters glanced at each other, communicating through eye contact. "That's a good idea," Danny replied. "What time did we arrive, anyway? I lost track after I fell asleep."

"You arrived at exactly 4:38 A.M., 31.5 seconds past the minute. The flight was 7.4 hours long including stops, and it took me 42.2 minutes to find you after you got off," Saguru replied dryly.

The teen winced. "Wow. Sorry about that." …_Atomic clock. OCD much, Hakuba?_

Saguru nodded in acknowledgement. "Do you have all your luggage? Good, let's get out of here before your friend falls asleep."

The codenamed 'Yan' grinned as he and the newly-dubbed 'Takeru' fell into step with the soon-to-be detective instructor, following him out of the airport.

"So, you play violin?" Danny asked curiously.

"As a matter of fact, yes I do. What gave it away?" the detective replied, looking slightly interested. He began to think that there really would be potential in this teen.

"Eh… it was the dark mark on your neck and your… interesting choice of attire. You also strike me as a canon purist, so you don't play viola," The teen explained.

"Ah, that _would_ do it. You're a fan of Holmes as well, I take it?" Saguru said, raising an eyebrow in appreciation.

Danny smiled and closed his eyes, crossing his arms behind his head. "Somewhat," he allowed.

Tucker rolled his eyes. "But not like _that_," he mouthed behind his hand, glancing pointedly at the half-Brit detective's back. For the first time that day, Danny laughed.

First impression, set!

* * *

**Letter:**

**Sender location: unknown**

**Recipient location: unknown**

Dear Team Two (how about calling you guys Yin Squad? Half the team, both girls, Phantom being black and white and all…)

We're sorry! Don't kill us! We both had a good reasons, you know. Techie hitched on for the ride without me knowing (you definitely had something to do with that). We arrived safely the day after my birthday at "4:38 A.M., 31.5 seconds past the minute" according to the detective guy, White Knight (that's what his name means). Even though he's our age, he's really… _meticulous_ to say the least. I don't know if you'd get along with him, Chaos. He seems more like the type to hang with Kinesis.

After we settle in here, I'm gonna begin my studies. Just in case, I'm also taking karate again. I was around yellow belt before I dropped it back in the day. My balance and endurance have really improved since then, so it shouldn't be as hard for me as it was before. I could probably achieve first degree black belt or higher by the end of my training time. Not as impressive as Mom's ninth degree awesomeness, but still good.

Don't forget to check on the house before you leave. Make sure that no one takes anything they shouldn't, okay? And please send a thermos over! Ghost-filled towers in London aren't good places for people like us who can see the invisible. As usual, keep an eye out for ravens.

-First In and Techie (Yang Squad)

P.S. Do you mind checking on everyone once in a while? I feel terrible leaving Lancer and Red in the dark. They'd take the news hardest. Can we do anything about it?

* * *

**Yan:** We apologize for the length of our author's notes. We will attempt to shorten them through combination or edits in the present and future. Thanks for pointing it out, anonymous reviewer Quacked Lurker! This chapter's a bit short (and might be some rushed) because we're trying to get rid of the small details to prepare for bigger things later.

**Shadow: **Extensive violin players possess a dark mark on their neck where the violin rests. That's what Danny was referring to. Viola players get that mark as well, but as Hakuba seems to love sticking close to canon, he plays the violin.

That's all for now. Sayonara from both sides of the Shadow.

**Edits: **1/23/13 - Fixed some awkward wording in the plane scene, removed some redundant sentences, changed the cover names for Sam and Jazz to be more logical, changed Danny and Tucker's aliases slightly.


	5. Test Results

_Only you can prevent wildfires._

Through the Fire

Chapter Four: Test Results

* * *

To First In of Yang Squad:

This is Chaos. I can't believe you left us here! If I could just get to you right now, I'd throw you into a ghost-proof room for three days with pictures of Skulker or Technus in a bubble bath _without_ a means to cover your eyes! Did you know how worried we were when we found out that you were gone? It was the _fruit loop_ who told us! You left without saying goodbye or anything!

…Rants aside, White Knight sounds like a pretty dedicated detective from what you tell me. You're probably right about him getting along with our resident psychologist (Kinesis? Really?). Still, it's nice to know that birds of a feather flock together. You three nerds just have the time of your life together, okay?

That's smart that you're trying for karate again. I'm guessing this is to solve the power issue?

Even though I only got bruises from the building, our psycho-psychologist here won't do anything less than strap me down to the bed until I completely recover. I'll have you know she ties a _really_ hard knot! It's just my luck that she inherited your dad's healing rate and your mom's stubbornness. Seriously, you can't bribe her with _anything_ once she puts her mind to her job!

Lancer is alive and well, but his right foot will have to be amputated because of the severity of the burns. Don't do the whole guilt thing, okay? It wasn't your fault. He's still _alive_ thanks to you! Since you're gonna be a detective, learn to get a clue, clueless one!

You're right about one thing, though. Everyone's taking the results of the accident pretty hard. After everyone left, we visited your parents' graves. You know they'd understand you leaving. I mean, you're doing this for them after all, right? It's not like any of us could go to our own funerals anyway, no matter how good the fruit loop is at covering up. Still, you have no idea how much I'd pay to see those reactions.

On another note, it _is_ weird to see your own grave. My parents still haven't noticed their daughter is "dead". They won't thanks to me and Techie. No use making them mourn… especially since it would absolutely devastate them. For the same reason, Techie's family and my grandmother know enough. Rather, they know we saw something we could get killed for. Oh, and we left flowers on you guys' graves, because when we get to you, you'll need them.

Don't worry about the fruit loop or the Bleached Boys taking stuff. Our psychologist already beat it into his head with the Creep Stick not to do any funny business. She got transferred to one of the big universities over here, much to her delight. I'm in a school nearby since we don't want to get separated (like you and Techie did with us). We're gonna be living in the same apartment. Don't worry! We won't kill each other.

The thermos is in the package that came with this letter. For now, we'll keep raven-watching. As for our teacher and Red, we'll see what we can do.

Take care of Techie and yourself or else! Oh, and have fun in the Tower of London!

-Yin Squad (Chaos)

P.S., I reiterate, Kinesis? _Seriously?_

* * *

**-Roughly two years later-**

A lithe form paced the granite walkway of a normally-peaceful park in front of four transfixed watchers. He gazed from under dark, side-swept bangs at his audience, stance and posture radiating calm and confidence. Unbeknownst to the viewers, the young man's physical appearance belied his true thoughts. He was nervous, but he didn't let himself show it. This was his time to shine.

Turning back, Danny flashed a grin at his two supporters: one was just waiting for this to be over; the other was experimenting with various yo-yo tricks. Saguru simply ran a hand through his dark blonde hair and smiled, closing his eyes; Tucker grinned back, giving the thumbs-up sign with his yo-yo hand in the middle of an 'around the world'. The young man nodded in thanks at the vote of confidence.

It was originally Hakuba who'd been called in for this case, but the half-Brit had generously deferred the case to Danny as a test to confirm the teen's ability to work alone. Read: alone as he'd ever get with Tucker around.

_This is my last test. If I pass this, I'm ready! It's all under control, Hakuba._

"So who did it?" one of the four watchers– a teenage boy with brown hair and a sharp, green-eyed glare– questioned the lone figure, frustration and anger clear in his tone. "Who put my sister in the hospital? And why was he after me?"

The black-haired teen stopped in his tracks, shifting his body toward his addressor. His blue eyes raked swiftly over the suspects and victim of this case, flashing sapphire in the sunlight.

The average-looking slim-built brunet who had spoken was tense and agitated. Defiance flashed in his green eyes, though he looked as if he'd cried recently. A green shirt and cargo pants completed the picture. _William 'Will' Stanford, age 16, victim_.

The red-headed boy next to Will sported tanned features, glasses, a red long-sleeve, green eyes, and freckles- the general look of a stereotypical nerd. He looked nervous, checking his Velcro Star Wars watch every few seconds, but he was visibly trying to calm his friend. Like Will, he also had visible tear-stains on his face._ Tanner 'Tan' Dickens, age 16, Will's best friend._

The dark hair and pale Caucasian features of the taller girl were prominent amongst her friends. Overall, she looked on almost impassively, but vague interest and a visible glimmer of concern for her friends shone in her honey-brown eyes. She wore a purple tank top and jean miniskirt._ Jamie 'Jay' Smithson, age 16, Will's girlfriend._

The other girl, a curly-haired brunette with Irish features, looked nervous but interested. She looked keyed up and ready for any action that could happen. She didn't seem as close friends with the other three as they were with each other, but she was close enough to be involved. She was dressed in an orange short-sleeve and khaki pants._ Victoria 'Red' Stevens, age 16, Will's classmate._

The last contributor to the case, Danny knew, wouldn't be able to make it here. She was the other victim of this, the only one who was hurt physically. A stab wound to the shoulder had necessitated her immediate departure to the closest hospital. _Tia Stanford, 18, Will's sister and guardian, victim._

Danny ran over the facts one more time to confirm his deduction. Cool, controlled calculation reflected in his ice-shaded eyes– a complete contrast from his usual lighthearted exterior.

The five teenagers had been in the park by 2:10 PM, the time of day when many people like to stay inside- the park was mostly empty. The group had set up a picnic at a certain table near the center of the park, a site they always used. Victoria and Tia walked back to the car (approximately 15 minutes there and back) to get Victoria's camera, which she'd left on accident.

Immediately after they left (about 2:15 PM), Tanner had asked Jamie to accompany him on the trip to the bathrooms (approximately 12 minutes there and back). Will was left alone at the picnic site. At about 2:20, Will was attacked by a knife-wielding person cloaked in black. Before he could react, Tia, who Victoria said ran back after feeling that 'something was wrong,' pushed him out of the way. After stabbing Tia in the shoulder, Will said the attacker froze, dropped the knife, and ran away. At 2:30, Victoria returned. Tanner and Jamie followed in two-minute gaps to each other with Tanner arriving first. By then, the ambulance had already arrived.

The park staff said that these five were the only people in the park, as visitors are asked to sign in before entering. It was only possible for one of the remaining four to have done it since the attacker's clothes were found in a trash can halfway from the table to the bathrooms. With all this information known, Danny felt that his deduction was solid.

_Of the four, Victoria is the only one with a solid alibi- the others confirmed that she left her camera, and she showed that she brought it back. She was definitely not here when Will was attacked. Will could've easily passed himself off as a victim after stabbing his sister, but that's not the case this time. Tanner and Jamie don't have solid alibis since the bathrooms are gender-separated. It's near impossible for them to confirm their alibis. Their time of arrival holds true with the distance, since it's an average of ten minutes from here to the bathrooms and back by walking. But if you add in five minutes for the bathroom, then their total absence time would've been about seventeen minutes. But if that person _didn't_ do that, then a slightly earlier return wouldn't be unexpected._

_The time period between the attack and the return of the suspects was long enough for the culprit to switch clothes easily. And the motive… the answer to this one is pretty simple, actually. As it is, I _know _this-_

Danny's head snapped up, sky-blue eyes boring into Will's defiant green orbs. The teenage ghost fighter held that stare for a minute, feeling the electric force in the mental battle of wills. Slowly, the brunet's glare dissolved. He dropped his gaze to avoid meeting the eyes of the young detective-in-training. Danny sighed, grateful that the younger boy had backed down. "I know who did it, but I guarantee you won't like the answer," he replied quietly. _I know _I_ didn't._

Will's shoulders slumped, green eyes downcast. "I-I _need _to know. Whoever it was might go after us again. How can I protect my sister if I don't know who to protect her from?" he glanced at his friends sadly. "Guys… if I did something to make one of you do this, I'm sorry. I don't know if I'll be able to forgive you for this."

_Of all things, betrayal hurts worst. I don't know how I'd feel if one of my_ _friends turned on me. _Danny saw the culprit look down guiltily. The detective-in-training shifted, eyes no longer carrying that carefree shine. His bangs cast his face in shadow, giving him a serious look. "It's your call. Do you really want to know?"

_Give them one last chance to stop their whole world from shifting or tearing apart. It's their choice whether or not they want it to happen, but at least you gave them a chance to delay it if only for a few days._

Will's fists tightened in determination. He raised his head and made voluntary eye contact with Yan. He held his gaze this time. "Yes. I need to know the truth… even if it hurts."

The teenage ghost fighter exhaled in resignation. That unmoving resolve reminded him of himself too much. There was no going against it. "Then… fine." he relented. _I'll respect that resolve. Thanks for that, Mom._ His slim form tensed in anticipation at the inevitable reaction that would follow. He got ready for the plunge._  
_

"Tanner Dickens… You did it!"

The shocked group froze. The picture was one of utter disbelief and cold, hard realization. Tanner's face held a look of unspeakable horror, be it at himself or at the outright statement. As the group now knew, the truth _can_ and _does _hurt in the worst ways. "No…" Will whispered. "Tan-"

Suddenly, Victoria spoke up. "Y-you're lying! Tan- Tanner would _never_ do something like this! No! H-he's… no!" her body shook with untold feelings as she hugged herself, eyes wide in denial.

Tanner stood there, rigid with myriad clashing emotions. He looked like a trapped animal among predators. He trembled under the force of his inner conflict. _"N-no…" _he breathed to himself.

"Tan… you… _why_?" Jamie spoke for the first time, perplexity and a hint of anger and sadness mixing in her pale features. Will could only stand there dumbly, staring at his best friend as if he never knew him.

"No…" Tanner clenched his fists. "No! I-I'd never do something like that to Tia!" he shouted hysterically. "I-I wouldn't hurt _anyone_! Not Will and _definitely_ not Tia! I love her! I-" he froze when his mind caught up with what he'd just said. His fearful gaze shot to Will. His best friend avoided his eyes. "Will… I'm sorry! I… I gotta go!"

There were several cries of surprise as the culprit broke away. _"Yamete!_ No one leaves unless we say so!" Danny yelled.

Tucker was ready for this. It was the moment he'd been waiting for. He coolly slung his yo-yo at his target with a perfectly calculated angle, shooting a glance back as Danny's arm dropped sharply down to his side. It was a _command_.

As the yo-yo whizzed through the air, a harsh whistle pierced the noise of the reigning chaos. A bolt from the sky fell upon the runner even before the heavily reinforced yo-yo string finished pinning the teen's flailing arms. Tanner cried out in fright as his vision was darkened and buffeted to and fro by some impeding object. He couldn't move his arms to get the thing off of him! In the runner's state of imbalance, it only took another short-flighted yo-yo around the shins from Danny to completely take him down. Taken by surprise with all limbs immobilized and vision obstructed, Tanner crashed to the ground.

Danny approached the downed teen at a more moderate pace once he saw the boy wouldn't be getting up. The rookie detective snapped his right arm out in front of him abruptly at an angle parallel to the ground, palm facing downwards. Almost instantly, there was a ruffle of feathers as a dark shape launched itself from the tangle of limbs. It glided through the air for a short minute as it came to rest on the proffered arm. When it settled, the graceful, predatory features of a young peregrine falcon came into view. Its dark brown, almost black head and wing feathers shone softly in the afternoon sunshine, enhancing the regal air of the bird of prey.

The teenage ghost fighter stroked the pale, brown-barred breast feathers of the falcon affectionately. "Thanks Yugure," he murmured, fishing a piece of raw meat from his side-pack to give to the small raptor, who hungrily devoured the delectable morsel. It shifted its perch backwards as Danny crouched beside the young culprit.

"You gonna try that again?" he asked the boy calmly. The terrified Tanner stared at the falcon on the rookie detective's shoulder and shook his head speechlessly.

"Great! That makes my job so much easier!" Danny grinned brightly, freaking the younger teen out. Yugure let out a short screech, causing him to shrink back further. The ghost fighter knelt on the grass and slowly untied the yo-yo strings while helping the younger boy into a sitting position. "You want to know what I knew you did?" Danny asked. He took Tanner's silence as a go-ahead.

"Even though you returned to the site at the right time, you didn't really go to the bathroom. In fact, once you reached the bathrooms, you quickly removed your outermost layer of clothes and put them into a bag. You left before Jamie and attacked Will. When you accidentally hurt his sister, you ran off. With your original thought, you switched your second layer of clothes with the first one and hid it in the plastic bag in the trash can halfway back to the bathrooms. From there, you immediately returned to see if Will and Tia were all right."

Danny paused. "You really didn't want to hurt anyone. My guess is that you wanted to scare Will off but nothing else. Hurting Tia was an accident, wasn't it? Your motive… I don't think I have to tell you what it was. You know it all too well, and now so do your friends. Ask yourself a question: were you going to do this for Tia, or for yourself?"

He placed a comforting hand on the teen's shoulder as the group neared. "You don't seem like a bad guy, Tanner, if not in need of a lot of counseling. Will seems pretty forgiving- just… really protective of his sister. Once Tia recovers, I have little doubt that your friendship will recover, too." Though definitely not right away, and definitely not with the same level of trust as before.

_Still, time heals all wounds. Some just take a while longer.  
_

* * *

If Saguru had had any doubts about his pupil's deduction abilities, he could now safely say that he had an amount of confidence in the other teen. The half-Brit had seen his potential from day one, and through the couple of years they'd known each other, the respect had only increased. From their interaction, Saguru could almost call his pupil a friend- Shigawa had on several occasions gotten him to lighten up and take a break. But from the start, the detective was slightly wary of the teen. He could feel that both Shigawa Yan and Yamada Takeru were hiding something. He wasn't the type to snoop (who was he kidding? He was a detective), but these two intrigued him.

Whatever their secret was, it had to be big if it required them to be crack shots, have the ability to pilot assorted aircraft, and disassemble bombs! They didn't even blink the first time Saguru took them to a murder scene. Well, maybe a few twitches here and there. But there was no doubt about it- Shigawa and Yamada were _not _normal. They were mysteries, and Saguru couldn't figure them out.

A background check showed nothing out of the ordinary aside from Yan's parents being scientists and inventors. The teens' records clearly stated that both boys had been average students of Milton High in Enmity City, Illinois, nothing more and nothing less. There was no indication that the records were forgery or the work of the Witness Protection Program, so Saguru had to assume that they were legit. He wanted _badly_ to do deep investigation about the two, but for now he didn't possess the time to do so.

_Some might say I'm paranoid, but my detective instincts have never let me down yet. For now, I'll just watch from the sidelines. One day, I might find out just what is so interesting about them. _Saguru nodded to himself and walked up to join the two friends.

"…I really did mean what I said to Tanner. Will reminds me too much of myself, and that's what I would do if a friend of mine ever did that." Shigawa mused out loud.

Yamada shuddered at that. "Brrr! That's just creepy, First In! I could see the similarities between me and the Tan guy too! Really, I swear I knew he would make a break for it before he even moved an inch!"

"It all worked exactly how we wanted it to, so what? Techie, you're a genius!" the teen responded, pounding his friend on the back.

_And there it is with the nicknames again. Then , it could also be a normal thing. Nicknames are common things nowadays. I might be overdoing it._

"You weren't too bad yourself, Danny. You might've been going a _bit _overboard with Yugure, though. The guy really could've gotten hurt," Yamada replied.

Shigawa rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Yeah, I figured that could happen. That's why I trained 'Rei the way I did. You know…"

_"…Hai-_ I mean, yeah," the dark-skinned boy rolled his eyes. "Three commands: warning mode, attack mode, and straight-out hunting mode– elimination mode, never to be used against a human. It's your so-called 'Katana' formation. I get it. Good thing you sent 'Rei back to the house, or else he would've stuck to the guy until next season…"

Shigawa sighed. "Hopefully, I'll never have to use anything past 'Ka'. I might even consider keeping a pair of peregrines instead of just one once I'm able, just in case." He paused. "By the way, maybe the stuff you've been working on will work better if…"

Here, Shigawa's voice lowered to a pitch that Saguru couldn't hear. He blew a strand of dark blonde hair out of his face in annoyance. _How in the world do they manage to keep secrets while I'm right behind them? Yamada and his secret projects grate on my nerves._

Saguru walked up behind the two boys quickly, interrupting their whispered exchange. "You did well, Shigawa," the half-Brit said to Yan, calling his pupil by last name through habit more than necessity.

"I learned from the best, Hakuba-_sensei_," the rookie detective replied, smiling back.

"For goodness sake, _don't _start that again," Saguru returned. The detective sighed, rubbing his temples in mock-annoyance. "I don't know how you'd be ranked next to other detectives of your experience level, but in my book… you're ready," he said bluntly. "I can't say that I've taught you everything I know, but you know enough to survive- no, _thrive _in the world of crime and justice. You took everything I taught you and made it your own; you've even caught some things that I missed. If that doesn't show that you're ready, then I don't know what will."

Danny stayed quiet through Saguru's short speech. It was rare to hear a word of praise from the half-Brit detective's mouth. When it was given, it was worth a thousand other words from random passerby. He only grinned, basking for a moment in the light of his and Tucker's joint achievement. "Then you know how I _really_ knew it was Tanner?"

Tucker looked at his friend strangely. "It wasn't just the timing and attitude and observing close-up and invisible that made you think so? Then what was it?"

The detective-in-training patted the techno geek on the back in mock condescension. "Here's where I should say 'it's elementary,' but I won't."

"You just did," Saguru put in dryly, annoyed at the 'invisibility' quip that only Yamada and Shigawa seemed to understand. He could endure, but only up to an extent.

The training detective rolled his eyes. "Yeah well, you know what I mean. I'm gonna go ahead and say you don't know, okay?" He took a breath before launching into his explanation. "You remember those days when you thought Star Wars was the best thing since The Hobbit, huh, Tuck?"

"Hey, you did too!" the teen retorted, glaring good-naturedly.

Saguru coughed behind his sleeve at that tidbit as Shigawa aimed a similar glare at both of his associates. A chill went down their spines when the glare slowly turned into a warm smile. "And I seem to remember that remote-controlled Darth Vader cloak you made for Halloween, the one you tried to fl-"

"Yahhh! Don't say another word or I'll tell Hakuba about the time when you lost a bet and had to dress up as Pau-" A hand quickly slapped over the boy's mouth.

"Fine, fine! No talking about those incidents!" Danny conceded, breathing a sigh of relief when he removed his hand and his friend didn't continue. "But yes, I was going somewhere with that point. You remember what the cloak was made of, right?"

"Cotton flannel and yarn," Tucker answered warily. "Don't look at me! I couldn't afford the ones on E-bay! I was just lucky that Mom had scraps left over!"

Danny nodded at his friend with a quick thumbs-up before turning to Saguru. "And what, _sensei,_ was the cloak of the perpetrator of this misdeed made of?"

"…Disregarding the _'sensei'_ part, the cloak was made of much the same material," the detective replied wryly.

The young ghost fighter leaned back against a stone post, returning his attention to Tucker. "We were _how _old at that time?" he said, counting silently in his head before quickly shaking it off. "Gah! Still hate math," he muttered. "It was before you finally switched to shoelaces and zippers."

"Yeah, before I found out how cheap Velcro is!" the techno geek exclaimed. "The cloak kept tripping me up from getting caught in my shoes!"

"Yet you still brought it to school the next day," Danny snickered. "It was the same day Dash broke the strap of your old watch, wasn't it? That was the one time I remember you ever thanking him for something."

"Well, I was happy! You'll never see this tech genius with a Velcro watch ever again, no sirree!" Tucker proclaimed. "I was glad to not have to pull out those annoying cloak fuzzies from it once the day was done. Made me feel sorry for the Tanner guy when he- wait a second!" He understood where his friend was going. A grin spread over his face at the revelation. "Don't tell me…"

"You found traces of the exact same material in his watch Velcro, didn't you?" Saguru said shortly, leaning forward in interest at the thought.

Danny nodded, pulling a plastic-contained shred of cloth 'fuzzies' from his pocket. "Besides having the full means, motive, and opportunity, if tested, this is a perfect match to the cloak material. It was a simple process of elimination," he said proudly, slinging an arm over Tucker's shoulders in a comradely fashion.

"Many thanks to you, of course, _sensei!"_ he called over his shoulder as he began to walk away with his friend.

Saguru frowned. It was not that he didn't like the title, but overuse of it could get annoying quite fast. His smirk returned full force as he remembered exactly why he had let Shigawa take over this case. It was a test, of course, but it was also a literal 'pass or fail'.

"I'm really glad you passed this, Shigawa." _Otherwise, you would never have gotten off the ground this year,_ the detective thought the slyly, following close behind his 'apprentice'.

Danny looked back over his shoulder curiously. "Why is that, Hakuba?" he asked rhetorically, unwary of his instructor's tone.

Saguru went on, smirk widening in the shadow of his bangs. "It's nothing much, really," he continued in the same nonchalant manner. "Just don't celebrate your success for too long. As you know, this was only a test run. Consider it a late birthday present." He paused to wait for the right moment as he slowed his pace down, gradually coming to an abrupt stop behind the mysterious duo, who he swore he would solve someday. His eyes glinted in the sunlight calculatingly.

"Our flight to Japan leaves tomorrow!"

The birds trilled musically among the clouds, sadly unaware of the scene below.

"…"

"…"

Any amount of teasing was worth being present to witness the reaction of the two young ghost fighters.

* * *

**Yan:** We have returned. Remember us? I'm Yan, heterozygous Kk for plot bunnies, and this is Shadow, homozygous recessive kk for writer's thumb. We are both homozygous dominant KK for writer's block. You see, both of our writing styles have taken a pretty hard hit this year, what with formal writing classes and all… So we've been trying to get things back together again and deliver things as well and better than before while still keeping the same tone and flavor. It's been hard, but here you have the result of our troubles! We did what we could with the case. Since most of it came from me, please tell me if I left any holes.

**Shadow: **Sorry for the wait. There's no use repeating everything Yan said. Here's today's chapter info: Yo-yos were originally weapons. I just turned a toy that was once a weapon back into a weapon. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

**Definitions**: Yamete - stop (command form), Hai - yes (answer in affirmative), sensei - teacher, instructor (sometimes used for people like medical doctors)

**Edits:** 1/23/13 - Changed up the letter from Chaos, changed some conversation logic, changed the names to fit earlier edits.


	6. Reconnaissance

_The fire kindled for another often burns the one who starts it. _

Through the Fire

Chapter Five: Reconnaissance

* * *

**Undisclosed Location**

_Blip- blip… ka-cha- ka-cha… blip…_

_[Enter]_

_**Amity Daily**_

_Tiffany Snow – Article p. 3_

…_Known causes for the explosion were the results of a gas stove and unknown chemicals. Mayor Masters has arranged for the funerals of local ghost hunters Jack and Madeline Fenton and their children, Jasmine and Daniel Fenton. Casper High teacher William Lancer is the only known survivor. He is in critical condition. The identity of any other individuals who may have been present are undisclosed at present._

Jazz sighed as she saw the article on the computer. "Do you really have to read that again?"

Sam gave the aspiring psychologist a terse glance before looking back at the screen, gripping the mouse with unhidden edginess. "Yes. I can't sit around doing nothing. I have to keep reminding myself just what we're doing here and why we're not with Danny," she replied.

"To keep our team safe?" Jazz ventured in answer to the indirect question. She sighed again when the Goth girl gave no indication of hearing her answer. "Look, Sam. If we were all together, it would be more likely that someone would find out we're alive. It would make us a bigger target. We're all safer right now than we would be if we never split forces."

Sam snorted at that. "What happened to 'united we stand, divided we fall?'"

Jazz resisted the urge to go into full lecture mode. "Well, in this case we're waiting, not fighting… yet. This looks like a case of 'divided in body, united in spirit,' don't you think?" she noted.

The Goth rolled her eyes and let her head flop back onto the sofa. "How cliché."

Jazz smiled with a touch of sad irony. "Yeah, you're probably right. But it _is _true. We're waiting for a good, solid lead before Danny calls us in. We've gone over this before."

Sam huffed in annoyance. "I know, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I hate being out of action like this! It makes me feel so… so… ugh!" She threw her hands up in a burst of helpless frustration.

"I know. But we're not going into anything until it's fair game," the redhead continued calmly as she walked over to the younger girl. "Unlike all the other times, my little brother seems to have a plan of some sort."

"And unlike all the other times, it's _all_ of our lives at stake. Said plan also involves going against a whole organization of people who tried to kill us!" Sam shot back.

"He's not exactly defenseless, you know," the aspiring psychologist went on. "Powers aside, I bet Tucker's got his back every second of the day. I can't imagine that either of them has been out of the other's sights for the past year. We just have to have faith in them. For now, it's all we can do."

Sam thought it over critically for a moment before letting out a resigned sigh. "You're probably right. Where did you guys get your optimism from?"

Jazz smile turned bittersweet with a touch of sadness. "I was raised that way," she murmured softly.

Sam recoiled as if struck. "Jazz, I-"

The older girl stepped forward solidly with a sharp, dismissive motion of her hand. "Forget it. Let's go get some tea. I'll watch you do your research. You know how forgetful I can be sometimes," she commented off-handedly.

"But I- you…" Sam stopped, then smiled a wan, grateful smile. "Thanks a lot, Jazz."

"Don't mention it," she replied, brushing the incident out of her mind mentally and physically. It got easier as time went on, she reflected with some regret. She poured each of them a cup of tea before sitting back to watch Sam turn back to the computer with fierce vigor. Because of their talk, her shoulders seemed to have loosened from their former tenseness.

"Well, we'll just have to do what we can to help, huh?" the Goth girl grinned with just a bit of feral menace. "What kind of team would we be if our half took a vacation while Danny's half did all the fun stuff? My tech skills might not be on par with Tucker's, but they're nothing to sneeze at. If he can find information about ravens, I can find some too," she stated playfully.

"I guess that leaves me as the law researcher," Jazz said, folding gracefully into a chair behind Sam. "Who knows what kind of legal doors I can open?"

_Ka-cha- ka-cha… blip- blip… ka-cha…_

The redhead sighed. It seemed Sam was back online.

_Well, at least our goals are solid, we're focused on the prize, and we're distracted from harsher thoughts for the moment. "May we live in interesting times." It was never this true before, and this is only the beginning. Nothing that happens to this team is ever finished halfway._

She pulled out a sleek Macbook and set it on her lap. An aspiring psychologist and future lawyer had to study for classes like any other student too, if only to take her mind off the present. Looking out the window, Jazz rested her chin on her hand reflectively.

_I wonder what my little brother is up to now._

* * *

**Tokyo, Japan**

"Nice airport," Yamada commented as he followed Hakuba through the baggage claim of Tokyo International towards the exit.

"It's all right. Service was good, the food was warm… even if the travel was slow," Shigawa added to that, stretching in a way that made half his joints pop and crack. Saguru winced at the sound, glancing back at the dark-haired teen behind him. No, his so-called pupil did not display any symptoms of becoming disabled in any way. _But how that is humanely possible is beyond me._

"You only say that because you've flown faster," Yamada grinned. Saguru noted the amused look he shot at Shigawa.

"Not that it was the fault of anyone but Chaos herself," the training detective answered readily with a knowing glint in his eye.

Saguru sighed. Again, he felt left out of the conversation. _If only I could find out the truth behind what seems to be a double meaning!_

"We are already 10.3 minutes late for arrival," he noted aloud dryly. "So you're right. Travel was slow. A minor result of air traffic, of course."

"So… we'll be meeting your father soon?" the tech genius said, changing the subject.

"Unfortunately, _Chichiue_ is one of the busier law enforcers. It is not good for anyone to disturb him beyond an appointed time. So no, it may be a day or two until we can," the detective returned flatly. "As for us, we are to attend Teitan High starting Monday. Our schedule will proceed as normal unless I am required elsewhere or school activities persist. Beyond that, you are free to do as you please… within the law, of course," he couldn't resist adding.

"Of course, Hakuba_-sensei,"_ Danny replied, fighting down the urge to outwardly express his and Tucker's mutual eagerness to finally get away for a while. Saguru could not dismiss the calculating look in his eye as a trick of the light. _For one whose emotions can be read like a book, he does a good job of hiding his secrets._

He let it slide this time, but only because it was a normal thing for his mysterious student and the genius who was his best friend and only confidant, from what Saguru could gather. Maybe a good taxi ride would erase his building headache. He really needed tea. Preferably _now._

* * *

It didn't take long for them to arrive at the Hakuba household.

Danny had to admit that Saguru's place was impressive in its own way. After taking the grand tour (read, Hakuba telling them where not to go, leaving everywhere else free), he was now taking his own time out in the front walkway for certain reasons the sandy-haired detective wouldn't understand. _S__upernatural _reasons. Danny winced.

_Who knew a piece of paper with squiggly writing on it could weaken my powers?_

The size of the place wasn't what made him look; rather, it was the sheer amount of up-to-date technology in it that interested him. The compact residence spanned several floors, each with its own use. It even had a lab somewhere around. The place would come in handy for some of the ideas he and Tucker came up with.

_Mom and Dad would've jumped at the chance to work in a lab like this._

Danny closed his eyes as a lump grew in his throat. He was dimly aware of Tucker coming up to him from the side. "Hey dude, we're finally here," he smiled, pushing his glasses up deftly. The smile dropped slightly when he received no answer. "How're you taking it?" he asked quietly.

Danny shrugged. "I don't know," he responded truthfully, turning dimmed blue eyes toward his friend. "It's just that… I know we planned all of this, but now it's real. We're here, and there's no turning back now. I only really planned up to this point… I guess I just realized a bit of what we're up against," he laughed mirthlessly.

"We're almost literally running blind with a two-year-old lead that leaves a whole nation to search– half a team of four teenagers against an organization of experienced killers, if our evidence is correct. This is different from ghost fights. We're dealing with _human beings._ I never thought I'd miss ghosts. Hey, I'd even hug _Vlad_ if I saw him right now," he snorted, dark hair shadowing his face. "Being here makes it even more real, so fresh… that Mom and Dad will never come back… that this wasn't all just a nightmare I can wake up from," he murmured the last part softly.

The mood was somber as Tucker listened to his friend. The techno genius had matured more than a little over the time Team Phantom was established. While he couldn't understand all that Danny was going through, he could at least support him. "You're right, the odds do seem to be stacked against us," he agreed, "but it's not like we've ever let that stop us. Get it through your head, Danny. You. Will. Not. Fail. Us. They picked the wrong family to mess with, and nothing's gonna stop us from taking them to justice. I mean, if the Guys in White failed, then what's another group gonna do?" Tucker paused. "And y' know, you can always ask Hakuba if he won't mind us living in a separate apartment."

Danny shifted his posture, surprise evident in the slight movement. Seeing this, the techno genius shrugged. "Yeah, the tech is cool, but if you need some time off memory lane it might be best if we don't live with a doorstep facing right at its entrance."

When the blue-eyed teen fully turned to face him again, Tucker could see he had a small but genuine smile on his face. "Don't worry, Tuck. I accepted the responsibility a long time ago. I'll be fine. Maybe another time. I really owe you a lot already, you know?"

Tucker waved his hand dismissively. "Don't mention it. Really. You do too much for us already. Thank me after I find a way to disable the ink-paper _ofuda_ on the front door," he replied dryly, "or maybe when you stop being so selfless, _First In."_ A knowing smirk briefly passed over his dark features.

Danny was thankfully saved from replying to that by the timely arrival of their host. Hakuba Saguru approached the two, carrying two large identical bird cages. Saguru paused in his steps briefly. "Settled in, are you?" he addressed them.

"Hai, _sensei,"_ Danny answered with a grin, Tucker nodding his agreement. _Even if you unknowingly have some form of ghost protection in your house, it's nice enough._

"By all rights you should at least call me _'sempai,'_ Shigawa," the detective commented dryly.

The teen shrugged, but decided to comply for the moment. He'd messed around with Hakuba enough already. "All right then. Is there anything that needs doing?"

"Yes, in fact, there is one thing before we can move on, assuming you took it upon yourself to adjust to the time change," Saguru noted, shrugging the arm carrying the cage of his peregrine with a pointed glance at the blue-eyed teen.

The rookie detective winced inwardly. It wasn't that he didn't like taking care of his falcon– quite the opposite, but he had hoped to avoid going back into the house until he could figure out Japanese spirit wards. Outwardly, he smiled lopsidedly. "You only want me to help because you don't want 'Rei anywhere near Watson unsupervised," he said cheekily, carefully taking Yugure's cage from the detective. But after he was sure Hakuba couldn't see his face, he set his teeth before entering the house for the second time.

_Of all places to have wards that affect _me_, it had to be this one, didn't it?_

A wave of nausea hit him as he stepped over the threshold. Already, he could feel his powers weakening. He would have to wait for at least fifteen minutes, maybe even half an hour for them to return to full strength, especially since he was still feeling it from his first time in. At this point, transforming would probably be out of the equation. Or even after it was, the walls would be as solid to him as if he was a normal person.

_Tucker's right. I _would_ feel a lot better in a separate apartment. But since this definitely won't be the last time I encounter ofuda, I gotta get used to it. Japan is full of myths and superstitions. Too bad some of them are more real than they think. Too bad they protect against things that most believe don't ex-_

"Are you going in, or are you going to stay in the doorway staring into space for the rest of the day?" Hakuba's impatient voice, spoken in Japanese, drifted back to Danny, knocking him out of his reverie.

_"Gomen,_ sense- _sempai,"_ Danny apologized, trying to suppress his powers deeper within himself. Thankfully, the dizziness subsided to a light, annoying, but ignorable buzz.

_At least no self-respecting ghost hunter that I know of has any of those. I can't even imagine how it would affect a _full_ ghost if it only drains me temporarily._ He shuddered.

Tucker followed the two in to keep tabs on his friend. Thankfully, he'd learned quite a bit about subtlety over the years. "Hey, Hakuba. I thought logicals like you wouldn't believe in… well… spirits. So why the ofuda?" he asked.

"…It wasn't my idea. My father's mother put it there. _Baaya_ thought it made a nice decoration- thus, it remains there even after my grandmother passed," the detective replied, directing his steps to one of the outer rooms.

"So there's only one, right?" the techno genius pressed.

"Not including the one decorating _Baaya's_ bedroom door, yes," Saguru answered, opening the door. Danny shot a thankful look at his friend behind the half-Brit's back.

_Now I know what places to avoid most. I'll definitely be adding ofuda to my research._

Saguru had prepared the outer room especially for birds of prey like Watson and Yugure. With an open space and access to the outside, like a meshed enclosure, the outdoors could be seen through from two sides of the area. He situated Watson, his female bird, on the far side of the room and briefly saw to her. Danny cared for Yugure on the opposite side of the room the same way as the other did Watson, making appropriate adjustments for the slight height and weight difference.

Once everything was present and to his standards, Saguru inspected Danny's work. After a moment, he nodded in approval. "Soon you will be able to take charge of Yugure yourself. You've trained him well."

"Haha…" Danny rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly at the rare compliment from Hakuba, the second in three days. "Hey Hakuba… we'd like to do a bit of exploring. You don't need us for anything else, do you?" he asked, changing the subject.

The sandy-haired detective was about to reply, but was interrupted when his cell phone rang. Rolling his eyes, he shot a pointed glance at the other and flipped it open. "Hakuba Saguru," he intoned into the speaker.

"_Hakuba-kun, I know you just got in a few hours ago, but we could use someone like you over here,"_ an apologetic voice answered him.

Saguru sighed. _Of course._

"I don't have a choice, do I?" he said dryly, replying to both Shigawa and the officer on the other line. "Fine, I'll be there as soon as I can," he spoke into the phone before hanging up and quickly checking the coordinates that were sent to him.

"You're right," he directed at his companions, sighing once again. "Since it's your first time here, I can spare the time to give you a tour. Vlad Masters would never forget it if you got lost under my watch. Anyway, it seems I'm needed somewhere downtown. Let's go, shall we?"

* * *

**Downtown Tokyo**

The second drive took them to the heart of downtown Tokyo. Saguru was keeping a close eye on his companions, knowing it would ultimately be his fault if they got lost. He knew they were competent in their own right, but with Vlad Masters as the one who asked the favor, he would take no chances. Still, it would not do for them to feel he was purposely shadowing them. By all rights, he was _not_ their babysitter.

By the time they reached the crime scene, cordoned off and guarded by police, the sandy-haired detective could sense Shigawa and Yamada's anxiousness to break away from him and do… whatever it was they planned to do in uncharted lands. Finally, after enduring a few more moments of their quiet fidgeting, he relented.

"Go ahead and look around, but try to be back by the time I'm done, Shigawa, Yamada. And for my sake, _don't_ get lost," he stressed, turning to the officers with the intent to begin investigation.

Danny raised an eyebrow quizzically at Tucker behind Hakuba's back but decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Of course," he muttered with a puzzled tone, pulling his friend towards one of the adjoining street corners.

Once out of sight, Danny flexed his hands, letting Tucker go. "Scouting time. Let's split up," he decided, nodding at the techno genius.

The dark-skinned teen grinned lopsidedly. "Communication via Phantom Spectrecals or Livewire?"

The teen shook his head with a wry smile. "Livewire. You can use the sunglasses, but my powers got back to full strength during the drive. I think my ghost sense will be more than enough for me. Honestly, I never should've let you name those- Jazz must've rubbed off on you before we left," he commented, smirking.

"Please. Since when does _Jazz_ rub off on anyone?" Tucker returned playfully. "Just make sure you got the right applications switched on." He turned the opposite way of his friend and began to walk off. "Later," he threw over his shoulder, digging the specialized sunglasses from his pocket and putting them on.

Danny sighed, waiting until the other had gone around the corner before digging out his pair of earbuds. He pulled what seemed to be a black iPod touch from his pocket and switched it on, brushing the Yin-Yang symbol on the back that stood in place of the iconic apple.

The Livewire was a personal creation of Tucker's. It featured a camera, long-range communication with other Wires, GPS navigation, an international clock (at the atomic level), and of course, the ability to download music via the internet. Even better, it was ghost-proof, untraceable, and on a secure private line. Tucker had hinted that it was just a prototype, but it seemed to work just fine for Danny. To quote the techno genius, it was "fun to play with, cooler than a phone, and way better than spy movies," which was why neither ghost fighter really bothered designing a traditional phone.

The so-called "Spectercals" served pretty much the same purpose as the Wire sans the music, but they ran out of energy pretty quickly. Tucker had yet to find a solution for the battery drain and was hard pressed to experiment with ectoplasm as an energy source. Still, the multi-purpose sunglasses were comfortable and very portable. As a bonus, they featured the use of isolating ghost signature "cold spots" much like an infrared detector.

Danny smirked slightly. _If this is the prototype, wonder what the finished product will be like? Anyway, Sam and Jazz are due to get their equipment in the last package we sent. I bet Sam will love the color,_ he thought, smiling. Even after their time apart, he still had very real feelings for the Goth, though he told himself he would wait until they were together again to tell her personally.

"_Hey, First In. This thing on?"_ came Tucker's voice over the Wire, cutting into his thoughts.

The blue-eyed teen blushed, grateful that his friend couldn't see it. Tapping the mic on the Wire experimentally, he replied, "Loud and clear, Techie. I say two hours and a half tops before we meet at the sushi bar across from the crime scene. It might take Hakuba that long just to begin investigation, but everything else should go fast from there. Map out what you can in that time. We'll compare notes later."

"_So two and a half hours of running around the city, meet at the sushi bar, and get back before Hakuba's done solving the case? That's what you meant, right?"_ the techno genius teased.

"Of course. It's not like I'm _speaking Japanese, right?"_ Danny grinned, slipping into said language with practiced ease. He could almost _feel _the eyeroll on the other side of the wire.

"_Of course not. I thought you were speaking_ Egyptian," was the annoyed reply, also in Japanese.

"It might be better if we totally drop the English in public. It'll help our language skills and won't immediately brand us as foreigners," the teen suggested.

His friend snorted. _"Some good that'll do me. You could pass for at least half!"_

"Hm, you could be right. Who knows? Maybe I have Japanese ancestry. I felt way more at home in the ninja-samurai getup in China than in the ring of Blood Blossoms at Salem," Danny pointed out wryly.

There was a sigh on the other end. _"Fine, have it that way. Disregard any and all differences between _Ming_ China and _Edo_ Japan, why don't you? I'll tell you if I find anything interesting. Techie, over and out."_

After the line cut, Danny tapped a button on his Livewire to switch applications. Turning the volume up, he began his half of the scouting as frenetic music played in his ears. Shifting on his heel, he sauntered off down the street. Of course, it couldn't have been ironic for the theme of _The Phantom of the Opera_ to be the first song on shuffle. No, definitely not. But of course, nothing could beat the classics.

* * *

**Two hours later, Sushi Bar**

Tucker held a newspaper and his yo-yo in one hand and two sticks of dango in the other, Spectrecals hanging on his neck. _Some things never change,_ he thought, smiling as he twirled the toy playfully. He had done his side of the scouting as best he could within the set time and was now on his way to the meeting point. Danny might be interested in what he found, even if it didn't relate to their case.

The half-ghost was already back, looking moderately content and relaxed from his position leaning on the wall of the store. Seeing Tucker, he straightened and offered his friend a water bottle, which he took gladly while trading over a dango stick. They stood in comfortable silence for a while, enjoying the late-morning snack.

"So," Tucker began after a few moments, "any major coldspots?"

Danny chewed on his stick thoughtfully before replying, _"Iie-_ whoops, I mean no. Not really. There were a couple spots but nothing particularly strong. The graveyards and shrines are the only places that set off my ghost sense for obvious reasons. The Beika area got me to shiver at almost every dark corner, but nothing I had time to look into. You?"

"Same here," the spectacled teen admitted, "but there was an old dojo that showed almost _indigo_ through the Spectercals. Might want to visit there sometime just in case."

The black-haired ghost fighter shrugged. "Might as well," he yawned. "I didn't want to get anywhere near the shrines. Can't be sure what they have in there."

"Maybe _kitsune_ control," Tucker commented, grinning. _"Ofuda-_based_,_ of course. Ghosts aside, I got a look at our new school and took some extra time there to gather information. We'll definitely be having a load of great times there– probably better than the Tower of London. The risk just increased by one, but if we're careful, we might get a new ally."

Danny cocked his head quizzically as Tucker slapped the newspaper on the table in front of him. "Big enough to be in the news?" he inquired, motioning at the newspaper in his friend's hands.

"Exactly," he replied, grinning a bit more stiffly. "And if you never heard of that guy, I swear the past two years were for nothing," he finished in a half-joking way.

_It can't be that bad, can it? _Danny shrugged, looking at the article. It took about twenty seconds for it to fully register in his mind, one more piece falling into place. When it did, his eyes shot wide open. "Are you freaking serious? _He's_ in our school?"

Tucker nodded.

The young ghost hunter slammed his head into the table, sighing. "If having a female clone wasn't enough… this guy… and added to that being a literal _meitantei_… a great detective… I never thought our paths would cross," he muttered. "I should've calculated that. I _should've_."

Of course Danny knew about him. Kudo Shinichi, the great detective of the east half of Japan, was the first Japanese detective to come up in his research. He solved just as many cases as Hakuba, maybe _more_, and was regarded as the "savior of the police force" in his native country. His reputation was stunning. Not only that, but like Hakuba, he was still a high school student– right around Danny's and Tucker's year.

Tucker patted his friend's back consolingly. "I feel for you, dude. I really do," he said with an apologetic tone in his voice. "Look on the bright side. Your hair is different," he shrugged.

The dango stick snapped in his friend's hand. He already had a level of respect for the _meitantei,_ mostly because of his methods and focus. His philosophy of _"Shinjitsu wa itsumo hitotsu," There is always one truth_, only solidified that fact. But those same skills and mindset had a high risk of endangering half of Team Phantom's identities. Now that they were all in the same school along with Hakuba, who was already a bit suspicious of them, there would be almost no avoiding that. Also, the guy had an _uncanny_ resemblance to Danny.

_But I refuse to call us twins._

"Could've been worse. Someone could've copied your ghost side," Tucker continued, shrugging again. Danny looked up once before slamming his head down twice as hard.

"Hey, I was only–" the techno genius paused, viewing the article facing the one of Kudo Shinichi, the great detective of the east. Article subject: International Kaitou 1412, aka Kaitou Kid, furthermore known as Kid the _Phantom_ Thief.

"…Oh." It was the only thing he could say. _Man, how could I forget_ Hakuba's _reason for being here? Kudo Shinichi and Hakuba in Teitan High with us, no wonder Danny's worried._

This could turn out good… or bad.

* * *

**Crime Scene**

The deerstalker shaded the detective's face quite well, perfect for intimidation tactics. The tension of the moment often got to the guilty one before the detective had to do anything. The perpetrator of the crime was already trembling before him even without a calculated glare. It was too obvious to one familiar with a criminal's psyche, especially when all the physical evidence pointed to the culprit. "…The criminal is… _you!"_

Saguru pointed at the old businessman, who jumped back before falling to his knees. He could tell from the beginning that this man was not the type who would commit a crime out of greed. It showed in the willingness of his compliance and his unstable demeanor. His guilt was evident, and he truly seemed sorry for what he had done.

"I'd like to ask you something," Saguru continued. "Why did you do it?"

The man's shoulders shook. "I-I did it because… because my daughter is sick, sir," he blubbered, completely surrendered to his fate.

Saguru knelt by the man and put a hand on his shoulder. The light of multiple camera flashes did not make it past the shadow of his hat. In the background, two teens snuck back to a position behind the British detective. Though they were literally invisible, they tried to stay out of 'shot' range – just in case.

"So much for laying low," Tucker whispered to Danny.

The other smacked his forehead but held his silence.

_We're here, we've scouted the land, found new ghost protection and potential coldspots, identified one who could be a great friend or ally or a risky acquaintance…_

_…We'll need all the help we can get._

* * *

**_Tokyo Headliner – Article p. 1_**

_Famous detective from London solves another case!_

_His signature question: "Why did you do it?"_

CAN HE ARREST KID?

* * *

**Yan:** More filler than anything, even if it is around one thousand words above last chapter. I'm happy to say we've just touched base with a canon corner of the DC/MK universe. Not much to say, but this is definitely not my favorite chapter. However, the ofuda was a pleasant part to find. Of course a logical like Hakuba would think ofuda are just decorations. I can't wait until we get to the beef of it!

**Shadow:** Can't say much, but I feel we're rushing a bit. Yan says otherwise, but I personally would like to receive some feedback on that.

Arigato, thank you, merci, to Patience Memory, who is our designated awesome reviewer this time around.

**Definitions:** Baaya - something akin to a governess, dango - a dessert, often three or more colored balls on a skewer, kitsune - fox (more specifically for this situation, a mischievous spirit fox known for its ability to shapeshift), sempai - upperclassman

**Edits:** 1/23/13 - Fixed some wording and name logic.


	7. Seventh Sense

_In quiet ones with fearless hearts, a spark, a fire, within them starts…_

Through the Fire

Chapter Six: Seventh Sense

* * *

**[FP New Chapter] Chapter 28 of story, Decoded, from PhantomWriter  
**

New chapter from PhantomWriter,  
Category: Action  
Chapter: 28  
Chapter Title: Final Destination  
Genre: Adventure/Sci-Fi  
Rating: Fiction Rated: T  
Summary: It used to be a game for us. Not anymore. The game is now real life, and we'll do anything to survive it. This is log of our experiences from my point of view and a general point of view. Read, and pray we make it out of this together.

[Click Here]

* * *

_Friday, February 23_

_Two days ago, me and Techie made it to Sector 3, which we're calling Final Destination. This is why we've trained so hard the past two years at Tower Base. Techie's still working on upgrades to our weaponry. WhiteKnight took care of a couple bugs in the system, but everything turned out all right even if the natives know he's here. He's a bit famous in the game for being the best player in Sector 2, the guy who regularly grinds the viruses near Tower Base. We haven't had much time to get our bearings here, but I have a feeling Knight knows enough to get around. Once we get settled, me and Techie will start tracking CALCULUS (aka clan Raven Murder) with everything we've got. OneTruth, the top-rated player of FD, goes to the same training area we were assigned. Hope we get along!_

_It's actually snowing now. It slowed us down earlier while we were scouting, so we had to get back to Final Base before it got too bad. Knight is getting ready to go after an elusive player, SilverMagpie, who's been messing with some of the superficial pieces in the game and evading security. I hear he's a class 1 thief as well as a skilled hacker, maybe even a challenge to Knight himself! No one and nothing in any of the sectors gets hurt in those capers, which can't be said for CALCULUS. Me and Techie are planning on letting Knight take Magpie on solo. We're gonna check on the local population of Unseen while he's gone. There's no way can we explain to him about stuff people say doesn't exist! CALCULUS is dangerous, but if _anything _can come through the perimeter, our security must be shot. Best to be prepared for anything!_

_Until the time comes, me and Techie will have to wait with a Knight in the snow._

_First In, signing out.  
_

* * *

Jazz smirked before scrolling down to read further. "Seriously, whoever thought of this was a genius. Nobody would take something from Fiction Press seriously!"

The Sam rolled her eyes but smiled before replying, "You say that every time they update."

The red-haired girl motioned for silence. "Shh. Keep reading- they come up with the funniest codes."

* * *

**6:54 P.M. – Outside Hakuba's house**

Thousands of miles away in Japan, the day of the Kid heist, it was snowing. _Perfect timing indeed, _Saguru thought, smirking.

Tucker shivered slightly in his coat and scarf, glaring at Hakuba's back, cloaked in that thick cloakish robelike thing he always wore outdoors. _Wh-who cares if it's Sherlock cosplay? At least it's warm!_

Danny saw his friend's jealous look and grinned secretly. _I wish I could feel the irony, but the temperature is way kinder to me. _The teen was really only wearing a scarf and jacket to fit in. It was easier to do that than explain his innate immunity to hypothermia.

It had been two full days since they arrived in Japan, and what a time it was. The media and police force had immediately latched onto Hakuba, forcing the two teens to tag along on his cases while carefully avoiding the cameras. It kept all three of them busy with one thing or another, and there was barely room for a break in between. Today, that time had been cut short by a sudden snow which piled up inches high early on.

"I'm sorry we didn't get to see more of the city," Saguru apologized to his companions as they stood waiting for his ride.

Danny shrugged. "You have things to do, so it takes priority over sightseeing. We can look around another time," he assured the detective, Tucker nodding his agreement. "Anyway, you probably have more interest in the heist tonight." _Like it wasn't obvious._

The half-Brit's gold-flecked eyes fairly gleamed at those words. _"Sou da ne…"_ he murmured to himself. He had to admit that he was looking forward to the heist with _great _excitement. _That's right. My target reveals himself, and not a day too soon._

His face bore the smile he often wore when cornering a criminal who deserved everything they got from the authorities. "Shigawa, Yamada, it seems you will be meeting my father sooner than anticipated. Since I will be joining the Kaitou Kid task force, it would be wise for you to establish connections with them in the advent of my future absences."

"That way if you go back to England, we won't be wandering aimlessly when we decide to stay here, _ne?"_ Yan filled in cheekily.

Saguru paused, then nodded. _"Aa,"_ he replied, eyes sliding over to his… assistant? colleague? Not exactly. "Though I suppose whatever your motivation is for staying in a strange land may be… mystifying," he returned dryly.

_To firmly decide to stay in unfamiliar territory before one knows not much more than the language and some of the nation's history… I really wonder if your motivation is just to see the land of your ancestors, Shigawa. No, you came here to investigate something- something you want to do on your own. Why otherwise would you learn from me instead of simply hiring me or any other detective?_

Danny shifted uneasily under Hakuba's gaze. At times like this, he felt like the sandy-haired high school student could look straight through to his true identity. It was Tucker who broke the tense moment. "So you're letting us _come with you_ tonight to watch Kaitou Kid steal the Adam's Smile painting?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

The detective's eyes glinted. _"Iie…_ he won't succeed this time. Tonight he will fly with his wings clipped, imprisoned in a cage fit for a magpie like him. If I don't catch him tonight, then there will still be another chance as long as valuable objects exist in this world."

He watched Yan shudder at the mental image. "You're probably right- about the last part, that is," the blue-eyed teen remarked.

"Your faith in my skills is overwhelming," Saguru responded dryly.

The rookie detective shrugged. "You sure you want us to come with you? I know you're not exactly thrilled with the idea of us being at your first heist in addition to the task force."

Saguru sighed mentally. _For all he says about psychology being a woman's job, he can get into my mind quite easily… which I will never admit._

If only he knew.

"You're right," he admitted. "I _would _like to go after him alone," he added, guessing what both teens were thinking. Tucker briefly recalled the plan to get out of going to the heist, which was rather simple. Play off what Hakuba most wanted, indeed. _Almost too easy._ "Then why didn't you say so?" the tech genius grinned, adjusting his glasses. "We understand if you don't need us around. We can meet your father another time."

Danny suddenly yawned, breath puffing into mist in the cold air. _Not tired, just bored…_ "And we really didn't have time to rest after we got here," he pointed out dryly.

Saguru winced at that. _How could I have forgotten?_

_"Gomen nasai…_ I apologize. I shouldn't take you with me this time." He ran a hand through his sandy hair absently, sighing. "Saa… You're right. It would be for the best for you to stay," he said with some reluctance, not keen on the idea of leaving them to their own devices yet _again_. Strange things seemed to happen whenever he was absent. At one point, he could've sworn that his food was _glowing_.

"You're _sure _you don't want to go?" he inquired once more… just in case. Seeing the looks on their faces, he sighed.

_I really shouldn't have bothered._

At that moment, a car pulled out of the driveway. Saguru walked over and opened the passenger side door. _"Konbanwa, Baaya,"_ he greeted the older woman. He looked over his shoulder once to view the two teens before resignedly sliding into the seat and closing the door.

Danny and Tucker waved as the car drove away, taking the detective with it. Once the vehicle was out of sight, Danny turned with a grin. "C'mon, Techie, time to go!"

The techno genius grinned back with new energy as he shouldered his backpack. "Ready if you are, First In," he snickered. "Wonder how Chaos and Kinesis liked Chapter 28?"

"Don't worry, we'll find out eventually," Danny assured. "Heh, they _still_ think Kinesis is a dumb name for Jazz. Think they'll ever threaten us to change it?"

"_Don't worry, _we'll find out eventually," Tucker mimicked his friend's tone, smirking. "So, O fearless leader, where to?"

Danny crossed his arms behind his head. "You know me. Where do _you _think we're gonna go?"

The smirk turned into an expression of curiosity. "Seeing if the myths are true, huh?"

_"Hai,_ we are. _Demo…"_ A look of thoughtful determination found its way onto his face. "If people around here use wards even without being superstitious, the 'Unseen' aka the ghosts here might be _wayyy _scarier than what we're used to." _And that's really saying something._

The techno geek sobered visibly. "You're right. Japan had one of the highest worldwide suicide rates for a while… not sure if that changed. It's not like…" _not like what we know, not like _home_… _"not like Amity or England. This is more delicate… balanced. Like if we touch the wrong thing, something else might explode."

Danny closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and let it out softly. "We'll just have to be a whole lot more careful, then. No attacking unless attacked. You up for taking point today, Tuck?" Occasionally, Danny would switch leader-follower positions with Tucker. It wasn't hard, since they felt more like partners normally. _But I need to step back sometimes and see what _they_ can do rather than run with what _I _can do._

It got hard sometimes, but it was only another way to build trust. _Besides, Tuck is a surprisingly good leader when you let him be…_

Tucker's grin returned slowly as he filled in the unspoken words. "Sure, dude. I'll take point if you take sensor. We'll start at Tokyo's edge. I'll show you the major coldspot I found earlier, then we can sweep by the sector you scouted if we have time."

Danny nodded. "Beika. We might not have time to go there tonight before Hakuba gets back unless we fly constantly. Give me a couple minutes and I should be up to it without the freaky paper interfering with my powers," he shuddered. "We can run to your spot if it's close enough. It's a good plan, oh fearless second… I mean, temporary fearless leader," he smiled cheekily.

"And don't you ever forget it!" Tucker returned easily. "It's only a few miles away. We'll get there in one- two hours tops if we walk. So… let's fly! Er… _walk,_" he amended, rolling his eyes as he began to walk ahead.

Danny returned the eyeroll, focusing on the small but steady feeling of his ghostly energy seeping back to balance his physical energy. _It's the Yin to my human side's Yang, _he thought absently, matching Tucker's stride.

He didn't know if it was him or his friend who started it, but soon their pace sped up faster and faster, neither teen wanting to give the other a lead. They laughed when they realized they were running, steadily pushing in the general direction of their destination. And the stars twinkled overhead, perhaps laughing with them.

All was peaceful in the city. It got even stiller as they ran towards the outskirts of the more heavily populated areas, stars flaring lighter to match the lesser civilization.

_The sky is so bright tonight. The thing is, being on the other side of the world, we can't wish on a star and wonder if the others are wishing on it at the same time. I hope Sam and Jazz are doing alright with that fruit loop… _Tucker thought, eyes soft behind his glasses.

_Running like this… it's almost like flying… the thing is, it's almost better, since it's not just me who can do it. I wish Sam and Jazz were here. I wish we didn't have to give up what we most want in order to _protect _it. The world is twisted like that. _Danny sighed quietly, slowing down just a bit. Tucker noticed and subtly matched his pace. Silence stretched between them for a while, but it was comfortable silence.

* * *

After what felt to Danny like more than an hour of running and walking in stretches, Tucker's whisper broke the quiet. "We're here, dude."

He was a detective, but he had been a ghost fighter _first_. So at that, he snapped into focus almost immediately, a contrast from his earlier relaxed mood. He exhaled… and his breath misted. It was _not _because of the cold weather. He could feel it in his spine. It was with green eyes that he scanned the dojo.

_Looks like a normal building, if not traditionally-built. Empty, abandoned, but not up for demolition. Ordinary building, most wouldn't give it a second glance. If it wasn't for Tucker and my ghost sense, I would've passed it by entirely. Overgrown weeds, too much dust… I wouldn't be surprised if no one's ever come here for many years. The fence is somehow still standing, but the sign is unreadable except for the last kanji of the first line, 'ryu,' of what would've been the dojo's fighting style._

"You ready, First In?" Tucker's question cut into his analysis. Danny didn't mind. Sometimes he got _too _focused.

"If you are, Techie. I've got your back," he replied with a chuckle. _First In._ It was a pun they'd created totally on accident one day. Since Danny was the official team leader, he was sometimes endearingly called the "first in command". Tucker had felt it to be too much of a mouthful so he'd absentmindedly coined the term "first in," which quickly stuck. Pun on being the leader and almost always the first to get into battle _or into trouble._

The techno genius inhaled deeply before stepping forward. Something seemed to change in that step, as if he'd become more serious, more focused, much like Danny had. "Let's go," he murmured. _And tread carefully. _Danny nodded silently and followed, almost gliding over the street and past the gates as they soundlessly walked into the dojo's courtyard. The mood was solemn, and it seemed like even the night creatures were still, apart from the strange glowing fireflies that floated near.

The half ghost nearly bumped into Tucker as his friend stopped abruptly. Instead of asking out loud, Danny decided to wait. He'd learned a lot in the past year about the importance of silence. It seemed he was right to do this, as the temporary leader half-turned and pointed to the left side of the dojo. Green eyes narrowed slightly. Two ethereal balls of glowing light, too big to be fireflies, danced in a slow circle in the darkness. They looked almost like little balls of blue flame… _Wait, that sounds familiar. What was it?_

Danny briefly wracked his brains for the answer before finally turning back to Tucker.

"They're so mesmerizing…" the techno genius breathed, but they were apparently not mesmerizing enough for him not to shake himself out of it.

"Will-o-wisp," the black-haired teen muttered to him. _"Hi no tama _or _hitodama _if you want to translate. They're harmless if you keep away from them, just strong enough to set off my ghost sense." _But they could lead you right off a cliff if you followed them. Literally floating fireballs of mischief.  
_

Tucker inclined his head to indicate that he'd heard before resuming the short walk. Right before the dojo entrance, he paused once more. "Danny. I have a weird feeling about this place. I think you should… well, be _ready._ I don't know… Just be ready in case it turns into flight instead of fight."

Danny smiled. "Trust your instincts, Tuck. They're bound to be right. Better safe than sorry…" He closed his eyes briefly before transforming, relishing the energy of his fully charged ghost side. _I'm feeling a bit more awake now._

The ghost fires winked once, dimmed, and vanished into the night as the two young ghost fighters slipped intangibly through ancient sliding doors. Cold air gusted through the room from cracks in the wood architecture, lending emphasis to the emptiness inside.

The dojo was almost completely empty, soundless as a graveyard. Despite being in ghost form, Danny shivered. He motioned at Tucker to get his attention. Once he got it, the rookie detective indicated the room with one hand before pointing at the walls and then at his eyes.

_There's definitely something in here. I get the feeling of being watched. But my ghost sense isn't going off..._

Tucker nodded, palming a marker he'd modeled after one of his favorite weapons, the Fenton Lipstick. Two ghost-proof yo-yos were in his pockets, and his backpack carried a couple of the more _effective _tested and tried Fenton weapons. He felt his friend move closer until they were standing back to back. In this position, they circled cautiously around the room with Danny's soft glow illuminating an area a good couple feet in diameter. The detective resumed observation with a calculating look in his eyes.

_This was an average dojo, probably with not more than twenty students at a time. But it saw good times in between the bad ones. It must've seen a lot of repairs then, especially if it's survived like this for so long… possibly built a good amount of years before the Meiji restoration, maybe late Edo period. Then later, it was probably sold for money… or the last descendant died without an heir._

The half-ghost briefly stopped in his tracks when his eyes focused on the next wall. _Of course. _Swords. _A kendo dojo. _He glanced at Tucker, wondering if his friend noticed that fact. If that small grin was any confirmation, then it might be a yes. Tucker had been interested in kendo for quite a while. Danny smiled. _I know he's been busy with his own studies, but I w__onder when he'll finally decide to take it up?_

They unconsciously moved closer to the wall with empty brackets, some at one time or another having supported bamboo or wooden training swords, or maybe even the deadly steel of a real blade. _Katana. _But it was all lost to the shades of time. _Then why do I feel like something's missing? Of course something's missing, this place is empty! But… _Danny paused. _Trust your instincts. Take your own advice, Danny._

He took the feeling of _something's there, something's missing, _and really _looked._ He blinked as the air _shimmered_

_No way._

Danny tapped Tucker on the shoulder and flicked his gaze meaningfully at a certain spot on the wall. _Take a look._

A glance. Quizzical eyes looked back at him. A shrug was his only answer. _Nothing yet. You sure it's not just you who can see it?_

The white-haired teen shrugged in reply but jerked his head at the same spot persistently. _Keep looking._

Tucker looked back. Concentration flashed on his features briefly. Confrontations with pre-adolescent pirates who were invisible to adults made statements about truly Unseen ghosts actually _existing_ indisputable. After a moment, his eyes widened. Surprise and disbelief… it was all there. _I really shouldn't be surprised, but… wow._

Danny shook his head. _Even after the stuff we've already seen, things like this are just weird. It didn't even set off my ghost sense!_

There was a sword on the wall where there had been empty space just seconds before. It was a full-length katana, and if everything was as it seemed, it had been there for more than just a year. Yet the smooth, dark wooden sheathe and the sharkskin-wrapped _tsuka-_ the hilt- while being the only visible parts, seemed untarnished by time.

_I shouldn't touch it. I've had more experiences with ghostly swords than I care to have. But… I really want to know what happened here. Though the picture is a bit clearer, something's _still _missing…_

A white-gloved hand reached up slowly toward the sheathed sword, made contact, paused warily. Danny breathed out when nothing happened. He tested the weapon's weight and moved to lift it off the brackets, then froze in alarm.

A pale, slender hand rested possessively on the katana's _saya _just above Danny's grip, stopping the motion sharply.

"You shouldn't be here, that you should not," a gentle but firm voice stated from the side in polite archaic Japanese.

Danny let go of the sword like he'd been burned and whirled around, green energy flaring around his other hand reflexively. Tucker's repressed gasp barely registered in his ears.

Crimson.

Gi.

Hakama.

Steel.

_Danger._

Piercing amethyst-blue locked with shocked electric green.

Danny tensed._ Sword-spirit!_

* * *

**Yan:** Chapter keywords: Not quite Fright Knight. It's a bit short this time, isn't it? We tried to see Danny and Tucker at the heist, but it Didn't Work! So here was the next best thing, the only idea which actually flowed. I really wanted to see Kaitou Kid too. Not this time, sorry guys. We gave nice hints to the new character, so unless you're unfamiliar with that person, it should be relatively clear. He isn't an OC, just a guy with a story we added to.

**Shadow: **Arghh, creative writing is an awesome class, but it has so much HOMEWORK! I hope the character we're introducing next chapter will fit in your mind as well as ours… but hey, you can't please everyone. Hi no Tama means 'ball of fire.' They're supposedly harmless spirits that float around mysteriously. But they can and do lead people off cliffs, so they're not all innocent. 'ryu' is a suffix (I think) that means 'style,' like in 'Niten Ichi-ryu,' 'two heavens, one style.' I've always wondered what would happen if someone used a fiction site to send secret messages. So… I do not own Fiction Press or the story update skeleton I used from there. Thank you.

And no, the story mentioned here does not exist on that site to my knowledge and is only being used for the purpose of furthering the intricate and strange qualities of this fanfic.

**Definitions:** kendo - way of the sword (not meant for killing), saya - scabbard, tsuka - hilt, katana - Japanese-style sword, gi - traditional shirt, hakama - traditional pants


	8. Shattered Heart

_A heart born of dragon's fire, extinguished cannot easily be…_

Through the Fire

Chapter Seven: Shattered Heart

* * *

**Saguru - Kaitou 1412 heist**

"…Friday, February 23, 8:51 and sixteen point five seconds." The pocket watch snapped shut in his hand with a loud click. Saguru allowed himself a small smirk. "My watch walks incorrectly by only one thousandth of a second a year. You can count on it."

_And count on it I do. I've been waiting for this for so long!_

"You're that detective from London!" the single grey-suited man exclaimed, displeasure lining his tone.

Saguru sent an assessing gaze at him. _So you're the inspector I'll be dealing with, huh? _The half-Brit offered a neutral smile. "I'm Hakuba Saguru. Nice to meet you."

Recovering from his surprise, the inspector made a shooing gesture at him. "Go home! This mission is not for amateurs."

_I will _not _be turned away from this! _The detective opened his mouth, ready with a sharp reply. "I'm–"

A heavy arm suddenly looped around Saguru's shoulders before he could make his thoughts heard. "Nakamori, you shouldn't say it like that," the large mustached man laughed.

The reproving tone hidden behind the cheeriness snapped the inspector's head upright. "Superintendent Hakuba?"

"He's my son." Saguru's father answered the unspoken question, mustache quirking upwards in an unmistakable sign of a parent's pride.

Saguru managed to suppress a sigh. _I could've taken care of him, Chichiue…_

"Your son?"

_Please… No really, inspector, what's with that kind of stare? I know we look nothing alike, and I happen to be very proud of that fact!_

"Sou. He's very eager to meet Kid tonight."

Saguru rolled his eyes when his father took the officer aside for a short whispered conversation. _Really, I can take care of myself. And I can hear everything you're saying. You know that, don't you, Chichiue?_

"Although he's your son, it's…" the man began, gesturing to get his meaning across.

The senior Hakuba smiled, belying the serious look in his eyes. "Saguru appears in the news too often. I think he's become too confident in his own abilities. Please teach him how different working in a group is."

The inspector saluted. "No problem, sir. Allow me, Nakamori Ginzo, to take care of him."

_I will not be baby-sat by anyone, least of all someone who has yet to earn my respect._

Nakamori turned back to Saguru as Superintendent Hakuba walked out the exit to do… whatever it was he had to do. Saguru really didn't care. "If you don't understand anything, feel free to ask," the inspector said, patting the young detective heartily on the shoulder.

A condescending gesture, huh? Saguru decided to humor the man. "Alright. I have questions." He breathed deeply, steeling himself for the conversation. "How long have you chased Kid?" he questioned.

"Twenty years, up until he disappeared. My squad was reassigned to him when he resurfaced," was the prompt reply.

"Then you should have a fair amount of knowledge about him, _ne?_ Alright, as you are a professional in this field, I assume you can answer my questions directly."

The inspector seemed confused whether to take the side-winded compliment at face value, but he nodded.

_Then answer this, _Saguru thought, a touch spitefully.

"Is Kid male or female?"

The inspector seemed taken aback. "Uh… might be male?"

Saguru narrowed his eyes. "How old is he? How about his height or weight? Birthdate? Blood type? Hairstyle?" _Anything? _The thought whispered teasingly through his mind.

Baffled, overwhelmed by the unexpected questions, Nakamori could only say, "I… don't know."

_Incompetent._

"_Sumimasen_, keibu," Saguru said with a stiff bow before pacing off toward the exit with a huff.

His Inverness coat gathered at his shoulders as he pocketed his hands. "Of all the basic– _Yamada _could've figured some of that out, and he's not the one studying criminal investigation!" he muttered under his breath as he walked down the entrance stairs, mentally reciting Kaitou Kid facts in his mind to calm himself.

_Kaitou 1412, also known as Kaitou Kid, is a thief who sends the police a message indicating exactly when and what he will steal. A sleight-of-hand "magician", a flashy attention-seeker as well as an escape artist, he cheekily evades all attempts to keep him out of security. Can disguise himself as anyone from an old man to a young woman, researching those he impersonates beforehand down to the last detail._

_He wears a top hat, suit, gloves, cape, and dress slacks, all in white, and monocle on the right eye with a triangular charm hanging from it. He uses his cape, which doubles as a hang glider, to escape from high heights. Tall, relatively lithe in form, Japanese with no sign of foreign accent, though he has no trouble changing his voice to match his disguise._

_Motive: besides attention-seeking, unknown. Will not kill or badly hurt his chasers. So far, the most he has done is knock them out._

Suddenly, a rectangular black item on the ground, contrasting starkly with the snow, caught Saguru's eye. The detective bent over for a closer look.

"A police ID?" he murmured.

His head snapped up toward the car parked at the curb in front of him. Straightening from his crouch, he peered through the window curiously. As expected, in the back seat lay a police officer– tied, gagged, and deprived of his uniform, not to mention sporting a rather impressive goose egg. Saguru glanced up at the roof of the building, then promptly grinned.

"Got it."

_Shigawa's right. No one _ever_ looks up. I'm inclined to believe that applies to Nakamori-keibu's task force half of the time. No wonder Kid always gets away… Then again, the police force is full of newbies nowadays. Even if Nakamori knows Kid, the rest of his squad probably doesn't._

He let out a relaxed breath.

…_Now that I know his escape plan, all that's left is to do and wait._

* * *

**Yang Squad - Abandoned (?) dojo**

_Shhh-hhh-hh…_

A whisper of ghostly scales. A flash of amethyst-blue. Fangs? None in sight… but why did it feel like the beginnings of a snarl? The figure appeared to be completely human. Then why did he feel so _otherworldly_?

The _gi_ covering his torso was a faded red, far inferior to the striking quality of his hair. The grey-white _hakama_ pants seemed to have had better days, frayed at the edges with the wear of time. Flame-colored locks were cut off just below chin length, waving freely over pale skin, accenting a sharp, cross-shaped scar on his left cheek. Amethyst-blue eyes seemed to penetrate deep into the soul, deep pools of unreadable emotion… eyes that once shone brightly with life, now misted by a faraway look that reached back to ancient days.

But his stance, his balance, the look in his eye _behind _the mists… neither teen could doubt that this was a warrior far beyond their experience. Danny felt a drop of sweat rolling down the back of his neck. _Can't sense him… he's shorter than both of us… then why does he feel _taller?

Sheathed sword in hand, the swordsman stared into their eyes fearlessly as if searching for something, as if their thoughts were his to read, as if he could _see _their secrets. Danny found himself unnerved by the piercing gaze. _Is he really a ghost… no, spirit? He doesn't glow… got next to me without me knowing… and if he isn't alive, then why can't I sense him when he's _right in front of me?

The mysterious swordsman spoke again, bringing the _katana_ to his right side. "I do not want to fight you, I do not. But if you mean harm to this place or wish to take this sword, _I_ cannot allow it." One hand shifted gracefully over until it was poised over the sword hilt.

Danny tensed at what he believed to be a threat, green energy flaring brighter. Tucker shot a short warning glance at him that easily conveyed his message.

_Calm down, dude. I'll do the talking. _Then _you can take over._

Outwardly, the tech genius bowed respectfully to the sword spirit. "_Sumimasen, _sword spirit-_dono_. I apologize for our ignorance. We are not from this area, so are unaware of the territory. We mean no harm to you or yours." He spoke with a nonthreatening, formal tone while flawlessly matching the man's strange speech mode.

Danny's jaw dropped mentally, the ecto-energy in his hand dimming to a low glow. _I knew he had a gift for languages, but when in the world did he learn an Edo period dialect?_

The swordsman seemed surprised himself, but the slight expression smoothed over to a calmer, more relaxed half-smile. "It certainly is nice to hear the truth, _de gozaru yo_… though I do wish to know how you found this place when others cannot. And it is not common in this day to walk with weapons peacefully, it is not."

_How does he manage to turn his statements into questions? _Danny wondered, tense.

Tucker relaxed slightly. _This, I can answer. _"Where we come from, the physical world is far closer to the unseen world than in most places. We _live _and_ breathe_ the unseen. Our trade is protecting people from the invisible that would do harm. Even in this day and age, to come prepared is to save a life," he responded carefully.

The swordsman paused at that, gaze deepening for a moment. He nodded briefly. "That is a worthy purpose to wield a weapon, that it is," he smiled wistfully. Then he looked up, regarding the two teens with marginally less guardedness. "Your intentions ring true, for you to see through my illusion. The misguided or unfocused simply pass by and never notice, that they do not."

Tucker shifted tentatively. "No other living people have been here?"

The samurai flashed a brief _not fanged, only human _smile. "Not since _Meiji_, young one."

Danny was astounded. _Alone? I don't think I_'_d be able to survive that… To have willpower that strong… Just what kind of man _is _he? _

Tucker seemed to have realized the same thing. "No wonder people pass unaware. The illusion over the dojo… it's _your_ power. It's you who holds it there, and your will _strengthens_ it!"

"As I said, very few can see past my barrier. You are the only ones to have seen through both layers."

And suddenly, for a split second, space _warped_. Danny took a step back in surprise as the image of a clean, well-kept and well-equipped dojo flashed in his sight, replacing the rundown, abandoned appearance of a broken building. _Blink_. It was gone before he could be sure it wasn't his imagination. The unreadable look remained on the swordsman's face.

_Why? What happened in his past for him to conceal not just the building, but its true state as well?_

Maybe Danny should've been worried at his lack of worry at the sword-spirit's power level.

Amethyst-blue closed as if in memory. "Your presence here is not unwelcome," he assured them calmly. "Still, had you not felt my presence before seeing the sword, you would have woken up in the morning thinking this was all a dream, that you would." He smiled slightly. "You wonder at my state of mind, do you not? Worry is unneeded. _'The steel is bent as it is forged, that the sword may not break.'_ This one has been through much fire. _Demo_… I hope that the others remember as well. _'The sword that forgets the fire, shatters against another's blade._'" He murmured the last part to himself, only just audible.

Danny finally spoke up, sending a short glance at Tucker. "Others?"

The sword-spirit's eyes opened sharply with a calculating glint of blended steel. _"Hai,_ others. Not other people, they are not. They are parts of me," he said softly. "In death, my spirit was split three times, that it was."

"Split, how?" Danny murmured tensely, recalling his own experiences with soul splitting.

The head shake was gracefully serpentine. "I do not know how. But I feel they are like this one, each able to think and act apart from the other."

Danny's eyes narrowed. _Dangerous. I'm one of the few cases I know of who've gone through that. If it turns crazy, I have no experience to counter it!_

"Should we avoid them?" Tucker said quietly, picking up on Danny's unease.

The swordsman paused. "I do not believe any part of myself to willfully cause harm, but be cautious if you should happen to meet them."

"They would be enemies if we met them? They would fight?" Danny pressed, eyes serious. _My halves were pretty different. If it happened to this guy, not once, but _twice_, and this is one of his _better_ parts…_

The swordsman shrugged, which seemed an oddly natural action for him. "Maybe. But never to destroy, that they would not. Only to protect. _Always _to protect. But even I cannot predict how they have changed over the years…" He inclined his head briefly. "Even I am not as I once was. You are right to be wary of us. _Yokai_ you may be, but your other half is human, that it is." Amusement crept subtly into his voice.

After a moment of shock, Danny slashed his hand down fiercely. "I'm not a _yokai!_ I'm not- not some kind of _monster!"_ he shouted, his sight flaring green in agitation.

From what Danny had read on the local supernatural lore, _yokai_ were indeed monsters: trolls who ambushed travelers at night and consumed their flesh; creatures who found lost children and spirited them away never to be seen again; demons with powers so great their bodies could only be sealed, never destroyed.

_I'm not like that! I'll_ never_ become that!_

A flash of a _not fanged _smile was given in return, the calm voice rippling like watered silk. "Only a shadow can be part of darkness and light, yet belong to neither, _de_ _gozaru_ _yo_. Whatever culture, whatever nation, whatever name you call yourself– spirit, ghost… _yokai,_ what matter? It is your actions that define you, as mine define me."

Danny calmed down slightly, but his body remained tense as his mind tried to reconcile the words with his actions.

_You're dangerous. That's _obvious_. You know things you _shouldn't_. Then why am I not as scared as I should be?_ These thoughts unnerved the half-ghost. He let out a slow breath. "…Alright. Say that I'm a… _hanyo._ Half-_yokai_. Would the… the full _yokai_ be able to sense it like you did? And if they can, how does it affect me?"

_Well, when in Rome, or in this case Japan…_

A strange steel-blue glint penetrated the deeper blue amethyst. _"Iya._ I am one of the exceptions, that I am. Many _yokai_ cannot even sense the difference between a human and a _yokai_ in human form. If one _can _do so, it is likely more than strong enough to crush you. Still, your _ki_ burns brightly to my senses, that it does. Learn to hide it, and your survival will become that much more certain. This one could track your presence the moment you stepped in my range."

Again Danny had the strange impression of _coiled scales, cold as steel, graceful as water_. He blinked, dispelling the image. It was advice from an experienced warrior to a novice. He would definitely remember it. "I was not aware of this. Thank you," Danny murmured, bowing slightly.

"_Iya_, no need," the swordsman shook his head, red hair following the flowing movement softly.

There was a pause as Danny fully digested the implications of the previous exchange.

_My ki? Fighting spirit… life force… That means… oh. Ohhh. He can hide his- Is that why I can't-? There's spirit energy, so ki isn't much of a stretch, but he's dead, isn't he? But… yokai… is he? Then, what's their relation to the ghosts we know? Are they the same? Different? Woah, I'm gonna have a _long _study meeting with you when we have time, Tuck._

"You told us of your soul pieces, but do we have anything to fear from _you_?" the teen challenged, green eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly.

The smile he received was an amused one. "_Iya_. There's only one difference between now and before. The sword is a part of me… and I've accepted it. And I am not a killing blade, that I am not."

"But… your sword…" Tucker murmured, glancing questioningly at the sheathed _katana_ at the sword spirit's side.

A pale, slender hand came up and touched the hilt lightly, protectively. "Fate is a master of cruel irony, _de gozaru_. This sword was mine once, when I still lived – the last true steel these hands have touched. But it was mean to be passed down, that it was. I have no claim on it any more, but I cannot leave it. It is a part of me." Amethyst-blue seemed to flicker to deep, sorrowful violet in the dim light. He blinked. It was back to distant shaded sky.

They fell into silence once again. It was longer, contemplative.

"Why are you telling this to _us_? You don't know who we are. We could be lying to you." Danny had to know. _Not that I'm complaining, but… Why aren't you attacking when you have a valid reason to? Why talk with _us, _complete strangers in this place? Why _help?

The swordsman raised an eyebrow. "You have given no reason for me to doubt your motives, so I have no reason to do so. As for truth and lies, I have seen enough of both. You would find it quite hard to deceive me, that you would."

"We would not dream of it," Tucker responded, holding eye contact with the piercing gaze.

He was rewarded by a flash of that sharp smile. "I know." Amethyst blue swept over their faces silently. "Tokyo is _my _domain, though that was never my intention, _de gozaru yo_. You are indeed fortunate to have met me first. Others would not be so understanding, that they would not. _Demo_… I admit I am not without my ulterior motives. A mutual exchange of information would benefit us both, _ne?"_

_A smile that persuasive has _got _to be illegal. _Danny shook his head in wonder. _We just met, and he's already making a deal with us. Still, he seems sincere. He's nothing like the other humanoid spirits we know. That's a good mark in my book. Malevolence? Not sensing any… not that I can sense him at all. Risky… then again, when have I ever played it safe?_

"What can we do?" Tucker asked seriously, sensing the change in atmosphere.

The sword-spirit's hand dropped away from the sword slightly, though his stance remained solid. "I cannot leave this dojo for more than two days' travel away, or my barrier falls. I have no knowledge of current events beyond that news which is known within that area. If you would bear messages to and from my friends in Kyoto, this one would be grateful," he said softly. "I do not ask you to bring them here, for that may be impossible. Just knowing how they are will be all right."

Danny nodded. "But I still don't understand. The barrier… why?" _Why do you keep the barrier up at the cost of your freedom? Is it the tourists or historians, or is there more?_

Amethyst darkened to a cold steel blue-grey. "You are not ready to hear my story, _de gozaru yo_."

The teen quickly backed up, an icy feeling creeping up his neck. "_Gomen_ _nasai_- that was inconsiderate of me. I won't ask again." He paused, glowing green eyes flicking towards his friend's dark teal briefly. "If we agree, is there anything else we should know?"

A small, almost imperceptible shake. "Iya. I will tell you more when you need it. But if you happen to encounter 'me' who is not _this_ one, I would also like to know. If they are as I am… they also feel incomplete. If you could convince them to come, I would be indebted to you. But after that… This one does not know what I will do, that he does not. But I do know… _'The sword is not complete with a shattered heart.'_" His eyes sharpened. "You know this as well. I can sense it."

Danny nodded. "I'm not unfamiliar with the feeling of being torn apart. That's a story for another time," he replied quietly, carefully meeting the intense gaze. The teen held it determinedly as he spoke his next words: "As for your situation, we'll do what we can to help," he assured, Tucker blinking once before grinning.

"This one… gives you his thanks." Violet-flecked blue regarded them intently for one long moment. The weight of decision cleared the clouds in that second. _"Ore wa Himura Kenshin… de gozaru,"_ the sword-spirit bowed – deeply enough to be respectful, but not deep enough to be deferential.

The two teens blinked in surprise at the show of trust (or at least respect) before returning the bow.

_"I'm Danny. Danny Fenton."_

"_I'm Tucker Foley."_

Their eyes widened in shock as they spoke their true names. _No way._

Himura Kenshin looked back at them with an apologetic smile, looking almost sheepish. _"Gomen nasai._ I cannot turn that off, that I cannot."_  
_

* * *

**Saguru - Kaitou 1412 heist**

_Tick…_

_Tick…_

_Tick…_

The sound of the clock seemed to unnerve the task force. They waited with bated breath, eyes fixed to the clock. It was almost time for their prey to appear. Closer, closer…

_Tick…_

_Tick…_

Suddenly, clouds of bright pink smoke gushed forth and obscured the painting. "What's going on?" The exclamation escaped one of the newer officers. No answer was forthcoming. When the painting cleared, all that appeared to be left was the empty frame of the _Adam's Smile_… and a simple note.

_I have taken the painting. –Kaitou Kid_

Saguru leaned back against the wall motionlessly, watching as Inspector Nakamori and his task force rushed out of the room after the "escaping" thief. He grinned, seeing the young "officer" who was left behind in the stampede. Then he frowned slightly as the individual spoke. "Heheh, just take your time… I'll be taking Adam's Smile, Nakamori-keibu."

_Male, definitely a teenager. But then, did he disguise his voice even with the task force gone? If not– but Nakamori-keibu said he chased him for twenty years. Is this really him, not just another imposter?_

"How is this thing worth 400 million yen? Art is weird…" the fake officer continued.

_And his body isn't built like a grown man's… you can make your body larger, but you can't shrink it, not with all the padding or makeup of the world. If this is the body of a forty-plus man, then I'm the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes!_

Somewhere in the Beika area, a certain teenage detective quickly turned and sneezed into his arm to keep from contaminating the crime scene.

The grin was palpable in the thief's voice. "Didn't think it would be this easy."

Saguru finally decided to make his presence known. "That's a cheap trick." He saw the "officer's" shoulders tense. Smirking, he continued, "People tend to be short-sighted. If something 'impossible' occurs in front of their very eyes, their initial response will be to believe it really happened." _Even if a certain associate of mine can make impossible disappearing acts seem disturbingly real,_ he thought silently. "It's 10:01. You're late by one minute and 13.02 seconds… Kid-san."

"Because of the snow, the train was late," the thief replied cockily.

Saguru rolled his eyes at the excuse. "I've heard better," he drawled.

A cloud of pink smoke suddenly obscured his view of the _kaitou,_ but it cleared quickly.

"Showing your true colors now, are you?" he murmured under his breath.

Kaitou Kid, dressed in full regalia, smirked under the shadow of his top hat and monocle, his white cape billowing around him. "You're one to talk, seeing that you're also late, _tantei-san."_

"It was the snow in the roads." The detective flushed at the similarities of their 'reasons', but managed to recover before it could spread above the cover of his coat. "Oh, I already cut the rope," the half-Brit mentioned nonchalantly. "After all, a tightrope demonstration is pretty dull after a… _decent_ magic show."

He couldn't see if the thief's face held any reaction, but he could guess that his eyes were darting around in search of escape.

"The balloon is gone as well," Saguru continued smugly.

_And you're here, backed into a corner._

"_Sou ka_…"

"Your escape routes have been neutralized. Now… I'm really curious, Kid-_san_… why are you a thief? Why do you steal?" Admittedly, he wanted to capture him more than he wanted to know, but still, he was curious.

Kid cast an infuriating smirk his way. It seemed to be his trademark. "You're a detective, _tantei-san._ It's your business to find out the answer." As he spoke, a hang glider snapped at his back in full flying form. Saguru realized with interest that the device was built into the thief's cape, not merely underneath it like he'd previously thought.

"Hang glider? Trying to be like Batman?"

"Batman is fictional. He has no real identity," was the cocky reply.

"Some would beg to differ," Saguru muttered. _Batman is actually one of the more realistic "super" heroes, not to mention one with superior skills of deduction._

"Now if you'll excuse me… I really must be going. _Ja ne!"_ Kid saluted before jumping out the window.

The detective smirked. _"Baka._ The wind is at scale seven strength tonight. The only place you're going is down," he spoke with unhidden mirth. He could almost _feel _the thief's shock, relishing in the hilarity of it all. Despite this heist not being exactly what he imagined, the half-Brit realized he was having _fun_. It wasn't quite as amusing as the Tower of London incident, notably involving Shigawa and Yamada, but it was passable in his book.

_And that 45 degree angle will take him straight over there… I better hurry._

His smirk widened as he tore off for his new destination. Out the exit, down the stairs, across the street, and into the– the ice rink. Perfect place for a crash-landing. _Unfortunately, the inspector was also able to track his trajectory– and he has a head start. _The detective groaned inwardly.

Now in eyeshot, Saguru observed the white-clad figure that scrabbled across the glassy surface in the moonlight. Then suddenly, as he finally gained a semblance of balance, the figure _split_. And kept _running_. The detective hurried faster, but he knew it was too late.

"That one! No way the real Kid skates that badly!" Inspector Nakamori yelled, gesturing at the straight-skating shape. His task force quickly obliged.

Saguru shook his head at the resulting dogpile on the humanoid figure, glancing at the other side of the rink to where a shred of white cloth melted into the snow. "Saa… I was too slow. The distraction served its purpose, no matter if it fooled me or not. There's no catching him today," he muttered regretfully.

_Not like he would've been caught in _that _pile, anyway._

Then he smirked. "A rubber dummy, eh. Seems like there are things Kid can't do," the half-Brit commented, jotting down that observation on his notepad.

_But of all things… he can't ice skate?_

That thought would be the source of much analyzing in the future.

* * *

**Danny and Tucker - Kenshin's Dojo  
**

The three were now sitting on the dojo floor, both parties trusting the other enough to at least put aside any thought of hostilities. Despite the shock of the introduction, Danny reached an unspoken consensus with Tucker and decided that no real harm was done.

Before they had fully recovered from their surprise, Himura had quickly explained that he radiated a natural ability aura that encouraged individuals to tell the truth. He had little to no control over it, but he assured them he couldn't force anyone to say anything. It didn't keep the swordsman from apologizing several more times, however.

_"I did not think it would be a factor, that I did not, which is why I did not mention it before. Gomen nasai. Your names are safe with me, that they are."  
_

The Yang half of Team Phantom had been discussing various things about _yokai_ and _ki_ for the past couple hours, intrigued by Himura Kenshin's information on how different Japanese gho- _yokai_ were from those ghosts and spirits in America and England. Danny was especially intrigued at the idea of _hanyo-_ those who were the offspring of a _yokai_ and a human. They were born _half-yokai._ He wondered if they had the same characteristics as him and Vlad or if they were different entirely. Were _yokai_ even ghosts, or something else?

"So when should we meet again, Himura-san?" Danny inquired of the sword-spirit during a pause in the discussion.

Himura shook his head. "At night like this would be ideal, but I do not care. You will not find this time convenient on all days, that you will not. _Demo,_ the dojo's doors are open to those who need help."

Tucker scratched the back of his neck, finally asking a question that had been nagging at him. "Is Japan really so different from the West that even the spirits are different?"

He received a nod. _"Aa._ Different culture, different legends. In this world, it's learn fast and get strong quickly or die. And since you are aware of _this_ world, you have much to learn, that you do. The world of _yokai_ is much closer to the human world than you may think– some readily walk among you both in the open and in disguise. Few ever notice, they do not."

_Well, that kinda answers one question. They_ are_ spirits, though not like the ones we know._

"…I'm just now realizing just how ignorant we are," the tech genius murmured. "If you would help us in the way of spiri– _yokai_ knowledge, we'd send a hundred messages for you any day!"

Danny sent Tucker a warning glance. Peaceful as Himura looked, it was better not to make anything that sounded like a deal if it was not offered by the man himself. And as he already demonstrated, he was powerful. With power came danger.

The sword-spirit smiled. _"Arigato,_ but that is not necessary. When I have a message, you will have to bring it personally, since… the post does not go to their address. That would be very tiring even for me, that it would." Steel-blue eyes flickered to the sheathed sword on the floor beside him. _"Demo,_ you should learn the universal rule that defines a spirit's abilities– the rule of legend, of stories, of _tales_.

He paused before continuing. "The Western ghosts learn defense before individual powers, _ne?_ They become incorporeal, become invisible, and fly, do they not? We _yokai_ of the isles of _Nihon,_ really, the East in general, however, are offense-oriented and fierce. That's what makes us infinitely more dangerous… which causes most to band together for protection in organized groups known as the _Hyakki Yakou…_ the Night Parade of a Hundred Yokai. Those who do not join… they either have their clan, or are alone like this one."

Those time-shaded eyes did _not_ glisten. No, it was definitely a trick of the light.

"Himura-san… You could… come with us."

Violet-flecked steel widened marginally at Tucker's suggestion. The swordsman seemed to hesitate, then he shook his head. _"Iya._ I belong here, that I do. And you would not be able to explain me easily to a law enforcer, even one of your age, that you could not. Even a civilian would question the appearance of a sword where there was none, they would. As it is, you two have already helped me more than you know."

At that, Tucker got to his feet. "Speaking of Hakuba… we should get going, Danny. He might be back at any second now," he said, unconsciously reverting to English as he spoke to his friend.

"I can help in your swift return should you wish so, that I could," Himura offered as if heedless of the language change… if only he'd continued speaking in Japanese.

Tucker glanced at Danny in surprise, incredulous. The sword-spirit's English, while accented, was flawless. The half-ghost sighed and nodded, running a hand through white locks. _I'll cease to be surprised by anything else coming from him… Meiji was the age of Western influence, and Clockwork knows how much time he's had on his hands since then. I'm more interested in how he knows about Hakuba…_

"Alright," Tucker voiced. "Thank you, Himura-san."

The swordsman shook his head as he stood, slowly sliding into a deep stance, hand over his sword once again. Danny instinctively tensed. "_Iya_, there is no need for such formality_._ You may call me Kenshin. Between those who may become friends, formality is a barrier, that it is." Kenshin smiled. "_Gomen_ _nasai_. I haven't practiced this without the sword, that I have not."

And he drew. Light flashed on lethal metal in the darkness before either teen could react.

"We will talk again soon, _de_ _gozaru_ _yo,_" was the last thing they heard from the mysterious sword-spirit.

And suddenly- coiled scales, cold- no, warm- wrapping around…

_Both of us…_

Then–

Steel. Fangs. Silence.

* * *

**11:30 P.M. - Saguru's House  
**

When Saguru got home, the last thing he expected to see was Yan and Takeru lying sprawled on a couch in the living room, fast asleep.

_Huh. Were they waiting for me all this time?_

He shook his head.

_No, they definitely went out… but where could they have gone? They don't know this area._

It was a strange day when factors didn't add up. For instance, it was obvious that both teens had gone out in the cold after he left. Both boys rarely if ever left their counterpart's line of vision, not to mention that both pairs of shoes were damp with still-cold icewater. But if that was the case, then how was it that Yamada's hair, socks, and pant hems were damp (and that was putting it lightly), but Shigawa was completely dry? Not only that, but only the first teen actually had the glowing complexion attained by a drastic cold-to-hot temperature change… just like every other winter with them.

_You're overthinking it, Saguru._

Then why was his gut telling him otherwise?

Saguru shook his head and turned to go towards the bathroom for a shower, then to his bedroom for much-needed rest. Before he left, he paused and looked back, then smacked his forehead wearily before slowly walking towards the slumbering boys. He paused before leaning down to scoop Yamada into a fireman's lift.

_They better appreciate this._

* * *

**Author's Essay:**

**Yan:** Kenshin is the property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, who wrote the manga _Rurouni Kenshin._ More about Kenshin will be revealed eventually, almost definitely after we get into the DC plot, so don't expect to see him on-screen for a while. Talk about culture shock, huh? There _is_ a reason for Kenshin's overly odd speech patterns. If you think he's weird(er), then he is. He isn't exactly canon _quite_ yet. Just know that "ore" and "de gozaru" do _not_ mix. Ever. "Ore" is a strong (brash in some situations) word referring to oneself (men only. "boku" is its weaker boyish counterpart, which Danny uses). This is seen when Kenshin uses the word "I". Usually he refers to himself with the word "sessha," which appears to translate as "this unworthy one" or in our case, "this one." "De gozaru" is a _humble _sentence ending, like a fancy verbal punctuation mark.

I hope the transition from Tucker to Danny was logical. Tucker gets his time to show his often-ignored language talent and newfound diplomacy skills, and Danny gets to ask the pressing questions. This is where the difference of second in to First In comes in. Because you can be sure that whoever starts it, Danny finishes it.

**Shadow:** And here, you see the results of my theorizing. _Nurarihyon no Mago_ is to blame for the "rule of belief/legend/tales" concept- a very, very good manga, and you learn random things about various _yokai._ I have just expanded said rule. Sorry guys, but due to dreaded real life, we will not be able to write for a bit. But the concept and outline for the next chapter are ready, so never fear. On that note, should we move this story to the crossover section, or is it fine how it is? For further note, to my knowledge, Kenshin's quotes are all _mine_. Yes, I have waxed philosophical lately. If you want them, please ask and credit. Thanks for reading!

**Definitions:** keibu - police inspector, tantei - detective, yokai - roughly translated to be demons but are more akin to monsters in general, iya - Kenshin's pronunciation of "no", Nihon - Japan, ki - life force, arigato gozaimasu - polite form of "thank you", kaitou - "phantom" thief, gomen nasai - more formal version of apology, demo - but

Himura - Scarlet Village, Kenshin - Sword Heart, Shinichi - can be translated as "one truth" hence the code name for him.

**Edits:** 1/23/13 - Fixed the name logic, added more to both parts of the Kenshin encounter, added description for Kaitou Kid in Saguru's thoughts.

4/14/13 - Changed some language to be more readable, replaced some unnatural Japanese phrases


	9. Facing Off

**To longtime readers:** A reread of the previous chapters is highly recommended, as they have been digitally remastered for your visual pleasure. Indeed, several aesthetic and logic changes have been made due to late realizations on the part of the writer.

Do go over to my profile and click the links to the full-view version of the awesome cover image by Patience Memory and the face shots of DC-style Danny that Shadow drew up for the event of this update. Amazing likenesses if I do say so myself.

Please speak up about your opinions on this chapter, because it's really been a while.

* * *

_Your eyes reflect your inner fire; do not be consumed._

Through the Fire

Chapter Eight: Facing Off

* * *

**Decoded: Chapter 15 (excerpt)**

_To you guys in Yin Squad,_

_I know you've had your doubts about this—your last letter was really clear on that, Kinesis. Believe me; I've had my doubts as well._

_We're not heroes. We've gone too far to call ourselves that. We're hardly villains, though. Instead, we fall in that dangerous gray zone between the two, especially me; I qualify as a literal shadow in the game. My job is the hardest, because it's so easy to do more than I should. I've accepted it, as you know very well. It comes with the territory of being an Unseen/mod—a code-defying game changer._

_We might bend the law. Break it, sometimes. Following procedure was never really our thing anyway. Vigilantes? That's what you might call us, but none of us think we're above the law. To survive, we've _had_ to act. Rest assured, the Raven Murder clan (aka CALCULUS) will be brought to justice—not by our hands, but by the hands of the law._

_So much rides on us keeping our secrets. When you poke at CALCULUS, they _know_. I'm not willing to risk anyone else unless they have both an open mind and a strong firewall or reliable system backup._

_Outsiders might call this a paranoid conspiracy theory, but we _know_ CALCULUS is real. We're not chasing a fleeting dream of closure—we _know_ what their tracks look like. You and Chaos were the ones who found the anomalies, remember? Accidental crashes. Fatal errors. BloodLord himself (that fruit loop of an Unseen/mod) was shocked at the corruption in the network, in his own company._

_So no, I wouldn't say we're quite heroes. Not anymore. We're more like… watchdogs. But since that name is far too placid and isn't very flattering to our image, I'd like to call us _falcons_._

_I hope this answers your questions, Kinesis. Tell Chaos not to mess with Blood's company records too much before Techie gets a look. Stay strong, both of you._

_FirstIn, signing out._

* * *

**Hakuba's house**

Danny woke up with a start, tense before recognizing his surroundings. He looked down quickly at his visibly-ungloved hands, briefly flexing them with trepidation. His core pulsed coldly in response to a testing tug on intangibility as he pressed a hand firmly against the wall. He sighed when it remained solid to him though he waved his other hand through its brother without problems.

_If I thought Hakuba wouldn't notice and ask questions, I would've had Tucker tear that cursed paper to pieces and burn it to ashes by now. No quick wall-walking escapes for me in this house, _he moped.

With sleep still weighing him down, he sat up and rolled off the bed in one motion. Back, meet floorboards.

"Oww…"

The half ghost lay staring at the ceiling for a moment, gathering his thoughts. A low screech from the corner of the room made him roll his head to the side. "Yugure? How did _you _get here?" Danny questioned the culprit. The young peregrine was no less proud and lethal for his diminutive stature. He merely spared his keeper one baleful golden-ringed eye before returning to preening his feathers. "I should've named you _Bandit_, the way you keep escaping," the teen commented amusedly.

"I think Spooky would be more apt. He sure fits the description." Blue eyes shot to the other side of the room where Tucker sat against the wall, toying with his favorite red yoyo with one hand and updating the ghost files with the other. "That was an interesting night, huh?"

"Understatement." Danny rubbed his head, groaning, "I must've been really out of it once we got back. I can't even remember getting in bed. Do you?"

The tech genius shrugged. "That was all Kenshin, dude. Whatever he did knocked us out like lights."

"Teleportation, I think. From what my ghost sense picked up—more accurately, what it _couldn't_—he could've done _more_ than that. Not to mention he teleported us through that stupid _paper_," he muttered back, picking himself off the ground.

Tucker cocked an eyebrow over the top of his laptop. "Do you trust him?"

"I respect him," Danny admitted, not at all reluctantly, "but he's definitely not someone we should take lightly. Because either his power being unaffected by ofuda is normal, or he's just that much stronger than me. Not to mention that even when his power is _sealed_… there's a bit he can't control. Either way, _I_ _can't_ _sense_ _him_. We _don't_ want him as an enemy."

"Kenshin's aura of truth really freaked you out, huh?" The yoyo swung like a pendulum before curling upward into Tucker's hand with a soft smack.

"Blurting out your real identity to a complete stranger can do that," Danny said dryly. "Himura _did_ say it wouldn't have happened unless we wanted it to, but… I would've attacked him anyway."

"Why didn't you?" the tech genius asked curiously. That was what he'd been pondering in the morning hours as his friend slept on. It surprised him that Danny had actually listened to Kenshin's explanation and not gone into a literal panic attack after the sword-spirit's involuntary show of power. An undetectable aura that encouraged truth-telling could be dangerous if used against them, after all. Assurances that Himura couldn't _force_ people to speak the truth (sans intimidation via blade and mysterious draconic smile) would do nothing to stave off the half-ghost's distrust once earned.

"Because… I didn't _want_ to," the young leader murmured.

_I don't even think I got angry then. Scared, yes, but angry? No. How could I? No matter how calm and mysterious Himura looks, I could see it in his eyes. He's accepted his power—he said that much, but… he_ _never_ wanted _it_._ I know, 'cause… I've been there before._

Silence hung in the air. Danny continued with a small breath. "It took me a while to catch on, but… even when he first appeared, he wasn't planning on fighting us. See, the sword was at his right side. In Japanese sword-speak, that's like saying you're not gonna fight. I think he was hoping we didn't know that," he mused thoughtfully.

_Not all ghosts are evil… some just want to be left alone. He's conflicted. On one hand, he drives people off with illusions and masks. On the other…_

Well, Kenshin wanted company. Having complete strangers send letters to friends in Kyoto who—Danny realized with a start—who the sword-spirit probably didn't know the exact whereabouts of, was a pretty good sign of this. Said friends were almost certainly _yokai_ themselves, which probably should make him worried.

"You've been reading into sword facts. Very _interesting_." Tucker's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. The training detective shrugged.

"Eh, even seemingly useless information can be useful sometimes." It had saved his butt quite a few times, actually.

"There's no such thing as useless information, O great detective," the tech genius smirked.

"That's what you think, O genius of technology and _unexpected_ _things_," the half-ghost returned airily.

Tucker shrugged carelessly. "Anyone who's confronted their fears would learn somethingfrom them. You of all people definitely know that by now."

Danny inclined his head in agreement. The two-year trip to England had been the perfect environment to not only sharpen their old talents, but add new ones to the mix; Tucker in particular acquiring… _quite_ the unexpected skill set in addition to his considerable skill with technology.

"Speaking of fears, Kenshin seems pretty convinced that we'd be lunchmeat in his world. I'm not sure what to think."

"No offense dude, but he could be right. You've been training a lot as a human—we both have, but as Phantom… when was the last time you've gone all-out?"

Danny winced, one hand instinctively rising up to rub at the back of his neck. "Yesterday was the first time in months I've stayed in ghost form for over an hour. In England, I really didn't need to transform; living with Hakuba, it made sense to avoid it when I could. I can use most of my abilities pretty easily as a human, anyway." He sighed deeply. "On hindsight, what we did last night was pretty stupid. If Kenshin hadn't been peaceful…" he trailed off, meaning clear.

Tucker snapped another full round with his yo-yo even as he continued to type, casting an intrigued glance at his friend. "Do you really think ghosts and _yokai_ are different things entirely, or is Kenshin just a weird one?"

"Anyone would be a bit… _off_ if their soul was fractured to pieces." His tone was dark, a glint of memory reflecting in blue eyes. A blink—it was gone. "I think it's the _intent_ behind the split that really affects the result, but in this case, Kenshin sounded like he didn't even know how it happened. I don't know about his other soul shards but… _this_ version of him I think I can trust not to hurt anyone."

_Anyway, he seems to trust we won't try to expose his dojo. Not that it would be much more than an annoyance to him if we did, but… I think I can give him a bit of trust back. Our names for his privacy. His messages for information. We're equal in exchange._

"He seems to be an alright guy now, but only time can tell whether he's really a _good_ guy or not," Tucker voiced, closing his laptop with a quiet click. The yo-yo disappeared into one of the many pockets of his nearby backpack.

Danny shrugged, ducking head and shoulders into the nearby closet. He emerged shortly with his pressed and ironed school uniform. "Either way, the information he gave us is more than valuable," he noted, inspecting the blue fabric closely. "Sam would hate this," he chuckled, "it kills individuality." He turned and continued, "I still find it kinda weird how he told all that stuff to us. I mean, we're _so_ obviously foreigners. I guess you could chalk that up to him having no human contact for over a hundred years, but…"

"But that doesn't mean he's had _no_ outside contact, especially with some of the things he said," Tucker finished the thought, brushing past to retrieve his own uniform.

A calculating look briefly crossed Danny's face. "I think he meant what he said about becoming friends, but it doesn't hurt to be careful." He snapped his gaze back with a small smile. "Hey Techie, by the way, I call shower."

"Aw man!"

* * *

Saguru listened to the footsteps padding softly down the cherry-wood staircase as he leaned against the nearby wall. Finally. His… colleague and his constant shadow sure had taken their time getting ready. The detective wondered briefly what their response would be when they saw him—more specifically, what he was wearing.

His all-nighter in the lab had given him invaluable information about Kaitou Kid, and he meant to exploit that information even if it meant leaving his mysterious companions to their devices. While he regretted losing a prime chance to meet a Kudo Shinichi, a fellow detective of his age and caliber, he figured it was for the best. It was hard enough trying to convince Ekoda High to receive him when contacted at such a horrifically impolite hour and on such short notice.

Saguru wondered again at what his… associates' reactions would be. Would Yan even care that he was switching schools this late in the game? The detective shook his head. When did he start caring about that kind of thing?

_If they ask me if I had anything to do with them waking up in their beds, I'll deny everything, _he told himself.

Finally they entered his sights: the messy black hair of Yan—_Shigawa_, Saguru amended (the part of him that still regarded him as a colleague rather than a friend)—and the dark head of Yamada, noticeably devoid of any kind of red hat. Having washed up and dressed in Teitan's cerulean school uniform and light green tie, they appeared blissfully unaware of last night's travel upstairs.

Saguru smirked mentally. _Now that I think about it, how do they _think_ they got upstairs? Sleepwalking?_

The detective watched as Shigawa took a long look at his attire, which was dark blue—almost black. There was the expected side-glance at Yamada, who shrugged.

Saguru stepped away from the wall as the two greeted him with a belated "_ohayo_". He silently congratulated himself on helping them conceal most of that horrible American accent. Yamada seemed to be more skilled in hiding it than Shigawa though the tech genius was forbidden by Saguru from trying an English accent _ever_ again. The half-Brit shuddered at the thought (which was almost as horrifying as the tech genius's singing) before returning the greeting. "I hope you had a good rest," he said, "though doubtless you _would_ after such a late-night excursion in the snow."

Shigawa had the grace to look embarrassed. "We did. But we were back here and asleep before you got back," he said quickly.

"I know. It would be hard _not_ to notice you two sleeping downst—" Saguru paled at what he caught himself about to say, which would be no better than outright admission of his _weight_-_bearing_ task the night before. Though not very experienced in his chosen field, Yan was no slouch in connecting dots. "—st…_aying_ across the hall from me. Especially with Yamada's snoring," he finished smoothly. He was rewarded by a small chuckle from his _colleague_.

"I resent that! I do _not_ snore," the tech genius muttered.

Shigawa crossed his arms with a small smirk Saguru feared he would become well-acquainted with. "So… Either your clothes got mixed up at the dry cleaner's, or you've switched schools on us. Ekoda High? Is it because of the task force, or are we just boring you?"

_The living mystery in front of me can never be boring, _Saguru thought. "Well, the natural reaction when receiving a lead is to follow it, is it not?" he replied aloud, mouth curling at the corners when the light dawned on his _colleague's_ face.

"You found something last night, something big. A suspect?" Shigawa voiced in admiration.

The smirk remained. "Hai. And I'm confident in my deductions."

"That was quick," the teen muttered under his breath, "I almost pity the poor guy…" He straightened suddenly. "Ekoda is a little far from here though, isn't it?" he probed.

"Just a _shinkansen_ stop or so away," the detective shrugged. "I will return in the evenings if I can. If not, I'll be staying with my father. I trust you won't do anything… _idiotic_ while I'm gone." Saguru flipped his cell phone into visibility for emphasis. "Yes, Yamada, you may do whatever you like in the lab. And if something _does_ happen, you at least know how to reach me."

Yamada's eyes widened slightly. "Thanks Hakuba," he responded, surprise evident in his tone.

"Don't worry. I won't let him blow up your place," Shigawa assured him.

"Please be sure not to," the half-Brit replied dryly.

Saguru was truly questioning his sanity. There were no guarantees when it came to experimentation, even with Yamada and all the precautions he and Shigawa took. The less-experienced detective himself had said the tech genius could be a mad scientist under the right circumstances. _Still_, the half-Brit comforted himself, nothing truly damaging ever came from these experiments. Yamada hadn't yet found a way to reanimate corpses like that in Shelley's _Frankenstein_.

_Yet_.

Saguru shuddered at the image of the dark-skinned boy cackling insanely over a body on a gurney, lightning flashing through large, gothic windows as he chanted, "Rise, _riiiise_!"

The detective mentally steeled himself with a short head shake. If he finally got a clue to those two living mysteries through this sacrifice, it was worth it.

"_Ja ne."_ With a curt nod to both of them, Saguru shouldered his book bag and left.

As the door shut with a click, the teens looked at each other in disbelief.

"There's no way that just happened. Him, switching schools this suddenly? Even if Hakuba did do it just for a suspect, even if he _did_ get a big break… did he just hand us a _freebie_?" Danny voiced incredulously.

The tech genius nodded, a grin flashing on his dark features. "He said it himself—he trusts us! Is it… Could it be?" he gasped in feigned shock, "Are we finally getting through his steel defenses?"

Danny shook his head and smiled. "He trusts us not to be _idiots_, Tuck. He's Britanese to the bone; he never says exactly what he means unless he has to or wants to. Being who he is, he got a double dose of that from both sides of the family," he said a touch ruefully. "Like Kenshin said, formality likes to get in the way of making friends."

"Well, progress is progress," Tucker shrugged. "So… chances of survival?"

"Eh, it'll be fine. I'm not too worried."

"And Kudo?"

"With my luck, our meeting was bound to happen whether or not he went to our school. Honestly, I'm more worried what his fan club will do when they notice _this_," a hand passed over Danny's face.

"Face trouble can be a _bumpy_ situation. Human or ghost, you just can't escape it," Tucker joked, quickly leaning back to dodge a smack from Danny.

"Try Proactiv. It'll get you the clean skin you deserve," the half-ghost quipped dryly.

"Even if he _does_ figure us out, I think we're fine… unless you can be arrested for being illegally alive. Can you?"

Danny looked at his friend pointedly. "Keyword: _illegal_. For one thing, we're not in America any more. For another, we can't prove we were victims of attempted murder. Even if we could, remember what our names are _now_? That's why I'm trying to break Hakuba's cast-iron logic. No matter how much I want to keep this in our team, we _can't_. When he does find out about us—and I _know_ he will sooner or later—I'd rather have him on our side."

* * *

**Teitan High**

It seemed the grasp of winter was fading from the land, albeit temporarily. Snow melted to mere vapors, skimming and sailing the blue skies in delicate fluffy formations known as clouds. It was a beautiful day, absolutely stunning in the warm, golden light of morning.

Really, there was no way this could _possibly_ be better, except, of course, for the fact that a giant, glowing, _evil_ eyeball in the sky, known in common terms as the sun, was following their every step. _Wonderful_. Were they paranoid? Maybe. Shaking like they'd seen a ghost? No. It was hard to be scared of something they beat up on a semi-regular basis.

Teitan High was almost exactly what could be expected of most other schools: long, featureless mazes of hallways lined with lockers; classrooms around every corner; bathrooms with working plumbing. Actually, the Yang side of Team Phantom had stopped in awe to admire how clean the boys' bathrooms were. Compared to the ones in their old school, which were oftentimes as haunted as they looked, it was the epitome of cleanliness.

Having taken Kenshin's warnings seriously, Danny was somewhat relieved, for he remembered reading about a type of _yokai_ that loved haunting dirty bathrooms. He really didn't want the Japanese equivalent of a ghostly cockroach hovering over his shoulder while he answered the call of nature (long story, which Yang Squad swore never to tell their female counterparts).

As they "traipsed gaily through the field of blossoming scholars" as Tucker said in a moment of lighthearted sarcasm, they took care to keep to the edges of their fellow students, Danny in particular keeping his face hidden under his dark bangs—no use stopping for a chat so soon before class, after all. There would be plenty of time between and after. He knew that after the school was aware of his existence, it would become a lot harder to walk unnoticed.

If several strategic blinks of invisibility and intangibility factored into his current success, none of them would ever know. Also, why work through the maze when he had the ability to go from point A to point B?

Through this careful progress, the two members of Yang Squad, the male half of Team Phantom, quickly found themselves in a room full of all-Japanese teenagers. The duo sat side-by-side on the extreme left side of the third row. Danny took the seat adjacent to the window for outdoor surveillance and extra light.

The young detective tapped Tucker's shoulder. "Am I in ghost form or is it normal for them to be staring like that?" he asked nervously.

The tech genius smiled lopsidedly. "Not complaining, dude. I've never seen so many students _not_ _skipping_. Or that many girls actually looking at me," he whispered back, outright grinning now. "See, it's not all bad. Here, girls _obviously_ know quality when they see it. I might as well enjoy the rest of high school while it lasts!"

Stifling a laugh at his friend's antics, Danny continued to survey the seated students around him. It took all his resolve not to fidget under the scrutiny. Black spikes, dark brown bangs, and even a few bleached-orange mops: Japanese teens filled nearly every desk in the room. And there, _discreetly _so as not to be impolite, multiple pairs of eyes peered at them over hands and open books.

_For a nation that supposedly has predominantly brown eyes, there's a crazy amount of blue-eyed people here. Can't tell if they're natural or contacts from this distance. Maybe I _will_ fit in after all._

The stalemate was broken as their teacher—_sensei_, rather—closed the door with what Danny thought was a rather menacing click. Standing behind his desk, the man surveyed his students quietly. Satisfied, he nodded.

"_Kiritsu!" _

The high-schoolers rose from their seats almost in unison. Danny and Tucker quickly scrambled to their feet a split-second after.

_So this is what it's like in real life, _Danny realized, now prepared for the call he knew would follow.

"_Rei!"_

"_Onegai shimasu!" _they chorused with their native classmates as the entire room bowed deeply toward the _sensei_.

"_Chakuseki."_

The half-ghost breathed out as everyone was allowed to sit, opening ceremony now over. Though he'd done his research and read about Japanese customs, this had still surprised him. He would have to be more careful remembering the cultural differences from the Western world. The "stand, bow, sit" tradition was only the tip of the iceberg.

"I hope you have all had a restful weekend," their teacher said. There were a few affirmative nods. "As some of you might have noticed, you have two new classmates. If you please, tell us a little about yourselves."

"_Hai_, _sensei_." Tucker stood back up and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a small grin. "Good morning to you all! My name is Takeru, Yamada Takeru—seventeen years old. I just transferred here from London Bridge in London, England. I know quite a bit about computer technology, but I've also studied many other things to a level of proficiency. I'll be sticking around for a while, so I hope we can be friends," he ended with a wink. There were a few soft giggles around the room. "Thank you very much for your kind welcome." He bowed briefly and sat back down.

Danny rolled his eyes in a longsuffering way as he got to his feet. Tucker never changed. At least this time the tech genius would get a fair chance at a date. Facing the room now, the teen smiled slightly, letting some of his old awkwardness bleed into his tone. "I-I'm Shigawa Yan. I'm also seventeen. Like my friend here, I also transferred from London Bridge School, which is… really far away, so… please go easy on us." He too bowed and took his seat.

It was the trigger that broke the barrier holding back gossip-vine.

"Shigawa Yan—interesting name," a girl in the far back row whispered to her friend. "But… doesn't he look _too_ familiar?"

"He looks exactly like Kudo-kun. Besides the hair, I mean." She whispered back.

"But Kudo-kun doesn't have any relatives, does he? Hm… do you think he's single?"

"I doubt it. Foreign, cute, and a little shy-sounding—what's not to like?"

"A little mysterious too. He didn't say very much, _ne_? It doesn't hurt to try, I mean unless he also has a friend like Mori-san…"

"The captain of the karate club? I see what you mean," was the sympathetic reply.

The half-ghost stiffened more with every word as the conversation continued, blue eyes wide under dark bangs.

Tucker looked on, puzzled as Danny slammed his head on his desk. "Dude, class has barely started and you're _already_ hurting the desk? It hasn't even had _time_ to do anything to you!" he whispered.

The training detective's lips barely moved as he replied, "This is worse than I thought it'd be." He straightened with a sigh. "In maybe two hours, every girl in this school will see me as 'foreign, cute, shy, and mysterious' with the same face as their most public classmate!"

Tucker nodded sympathetically. "Especially if they find out your similar taste in careers. Don't let it get to you too much, dude. Anyway, the shyness factor was _your_ fault," he pointed out with a crooked smile.

"I thought it would make them look _less_," Danny defended, sore at the comment.

_Why _does_ the face thing get to me? Do I miss my attention as Phantom that much?_

After a moment, the half-ghost shook his head.

_Nah. Popularity is overrated. Still, I _do_ like to be recognized for my own work. I knew I would be working under the shadows of other detectives, but _this_ is just ridiculous._

Unfortunately, it was only the beginning of a tendency worse than acne.

* * *

Danny walked the halls of Teitan beside Tucker between classes, resisting the tickling sensation on the back of his neck. Now that people knew about him, the detective figured he could travel without much identity confusion. He didn't factor in just how fascinating they would find his face, however. He glanced around from the corner of his eye. _One, two… make that five total, _all of whom quickly stopped staring whenever he turned his head. Maintaining a calm, unbothered, and almost clueless façade was getting difficult.

_I would hate to be Kudo Shinichi if this is what he has to go through every day._

"Um, _sumimasen_—a moment, please," a timid voice spoke up from the side.

Danny stopped as his eyes lit on the speaker, a shy-looking boy with unremarkable features other than the pair of rectangular glasses perched on his nose and the pencil behind his right ear.

_Whew, ink hands. Looks like he was changing some printer ink. Actually, he probably does it a lot, looking at his cuffs. A lower year then—he probably does that stuff for his seniors. And why spend time with printers a lot? An aspiring journalist or writer is what we have here. Journalist is more likely, probably for the school paper. But he really is shy. His posture screams it. He was definitely put up to this, so I'll humor him._

The kid fidgeted under his gaze. "Um, you're Shigawa-sempai and Yamada-sempai, ne?"

Danny sent a reassuring nod his way. "That's us. I'm Shigawa Yan—he's Takeru."

"I-I'm Yamashita Takeshi from the class below you. Shigawa-sempai, some of us wanted to ask you something, but…"

"Us?" Tucker echoed, looking shiftily back and forth in mock suspicion.

The boy straightened slightly, gaining confidence. "The creative writing and journalism club! We get the story and write it, too! Check out the Teitan newsletter. We accept writers from any background, whether new or veteran!"

Inwardly, Danny grinned.

_Heh, I was right! Awesome! But hey, the creative writing and journalism clubs are one and the same? I've gotta pick up a copy of their paper. It should be a hilarious read. And even if he was put up to this, answering some questions might lessen the staring._

"Sure, I'll answer some questions."

Their nervous schoolmate grinned brightly and bowed. "Arigato, sempai!"

"No problem," Danny said, bowing back. It was becoming a reflex, seriously.

Tucker flicked his eyes at his friend pointedly. "We have to get going, Yamash- Yamashaw- oh, stuff it… Yama-kun. We're listening, but make it quick." He never did like how long some Japanese names could be.

"Oh, _gomen_ _nasai!_ Erm, It's not a lot of questions, really, not even enough for a real interview. I… we were wondering if…" The kid floundered a bit before gathering himself, "We were wondering if you are really Kudo-kun's long-lost twin brother who grew up in an orphanage for geniuses in England in order to be raised as a detective, only to discover your origins and return under a pseudonym in order to reunite with your brother after years of being separated, teaming up for the sole purpose of capturing an insane egotistic serial killer?" He paused, having spouted the question in one long breath, "or maybe you're a fan of Kudo-kun and decided to use some of your inheritance from a rich uncle in order to pay for plastic surgery to make your face look like his?"

Danny blinked, running that sentence (or was it a run-on?) through his brain several times. As understanding dawned on him, the half-ghost threw away any thoughts of keeping a straight face, sending a withering glare at Tucker. Mentioned genius was laughing his guts out.

The black-haired transfer student couldn't decide whether to join in and laughing hysterically or scream. Probably both. It wouldn't be good for his reputation, but it would _feel_ amazing. Creative writing club, indeed!

_Don't kill the messenger, don't kill the messenger._

"You think that I'm…" The half-ghost slowly exhaled after imagining himself beating up the Box Ghost, slowly, methodically… His voice did _not_ shake. Really. Finally, he calmed down enough to answer in a mostly civilized fashion. "Okay. First of all, I am in no way related to Kudo Shinichi—I checked recently to be absolutely sure of it. Second, I was actually raised in America, not England. Third, my _uncle_ is very much alive. Fourth and most importantly, while I _am_ a bit of a fan of Kudo's work, I was _born_ with this face. Does that answer your questions, Yamashita-kun?"

The timid boy nodded quickly, looking slightly disappointed at the reply and unnerved by the strange smile the teen was sending his way. "_Arigato_, Shigawa-sempai." Then he perked up slightly, turning to the other transfer student. "Oh, and Yamada-sempai, A few of the club members wanted me to ask you something too."

The tech genius, who had gradually recovered from his mirthful fit during the exchange, cocked an eyebrow. _I thought the attention was mostly on you, _he conveyed to Danny through a quizzical glance.

The half-ghost shrugged, his face again calm as he made note of the curious bystanders listening in on the supposed interview. _It can't be worse than what I got._

Tucker let a hint of curiosity leak onto his face. "Alright. Ask away."

Takeshi took a deep breath. "They wanted to know how you got so tan."

Tucker was struck utterly speechless.

Momentarily forgetting his aggravation, Danny burst into laughter at the look on his friend's face.

The tech genius groaned, "Dude, forget Proactiv. A plastic surgery wouldn't fix this!"

The poor freshman named Yamashita Takeshi could only look on in innocent confusion.

* * *

Hours after the disastrous "interview," Yang Squad could be found in yet another room, namely a history class with a teacher who seemed to like touching on elements of anthropology. As the discussion turned, the subject turned to the topic of names, their meanings, and a bit about their origins and symbolism if the _sensei_ knew of them.

"…are not just labels. They each carry a meaning or symbolism in their etymology," the teacher lectured. "It was tradition for a warrior to change names at their _genpuku_—their coming of age. Names give _identity_. In some cultures, it is believed that the individual's life is defined by the meaning of his name. Is this something that should be lived by, or not?"

The history teacher paused, surveying the class sternly. Then she smiled tightly. "All right then. When I call on you, please come up and write your name on the board. Akimoto Keiko, you're first."

Danny looked up in curiosity. This class had suddenly become a lot more interesting. He watched as the class stood one after another and walked to the front, each teenager briefly discussing the kanji that composed their names. Some, like the common 'Yama' and 'Moto' names, were easily explained. Others… not so much. His chosen name definitely fell into the latter category. Tucker's, well…

"Yamada Takeru."

Tucker strode forward and took his place in front of the board, marking his assumed identity down with confident lines.

_Yama, three strokes; da, five strokes. Takeru… a crazy large amount of 'em._

山田 健

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Your family name is fairly… straightforward, Yamada-kun."

Understatement. Tucker hadn't found out until later that Yamada was the equivalent of the name Smith in Japan. In fact, his chosen alias as a whole was pretty common. A strangled snicker disguised as a cough was audible from the side of the room. The tech genius glared at Danny, who looked back innocently. He was still a little sore from the Q&A with that kid, Yama-whatever.

"Hai," he agreed, turning back to the teacher. "Mountain rice field."

"Your given name, Takeru, uses the character for _health and strength_. Your full name is quite close to that of the legendary 12th emperor, Yamato Takeru no Mikoto, though the kanji is different. It would not surprise me if you were named specifically for that reason."

Though of course he wouldn't be saying it aloud, that was something Tucker _hadn't_ known when choosing his name. "Arigato, sensei." He received a nod.

"You may take your seat now."

It took several more names and some rather typical meanings and symbolism before Danny's. The black-haired training detective almost yawned, interest waning as it became evident he knew most of them already. After what seemed like an eternity, the list finally reached him.

"Shigawa Yan."

Danny stood up in one smooth motion, resisting the urge to crack his back, neck, and other joints, and wended his way between the desks to the front, also managing to ignore the ever-present stares.

_They'll get over it soon. They have to or I might go insane! _he thought, turning to face the room of blue lasers pointing at him.

The half-ghost picked up a marker and began to stroke the characters neatly onto the nearest empty space.

_Shi-ga-wa Yan._

しがわ 燕

The teen studied the hiragana and kanji that made up his alias, staining the whiteboard black with glistening ink that had yet to dry, so swiftly had he written it—very neatly, of course, or a certain half-Brit would be hounding him about it.

"Is there a reason why you wrote your family name in hiragana, Shigawa-kun?" the teacher asked. For good reason; in family names, the complicated kanji were the norm, not the simplified, curly hiragana. Kanji had meanings. Hiragana merely represented the sounds they made.

Danny smiled lopsidedly. "The kanji reading is actually _Shinagawa_, but my family wanted to keep the original pronunciation. It's not so easy to reflect that without writing out the hiragana."

To demonstrate, he quickly sketched down the mentioned kanji underneath the three curvy characters.

_Shina… gawa_

品川

Hopefully sensei wouldn't notice the deflection and unanswered question.

_Of course we had to change the kanji. The one Tucker originally used for 'shi' was the one for _death (死)_. Along with 'gawa', _river_, it would have unnerving connotations. If a name that implies the River Styx doesn't call attention, then I don't know what does._

"_Sou_ _desu_ _ne_…" the woman nodded. "I see your given name is written in kanji, yet you use the Chinese pronunciation. You must be happy that it is, ne?"

Danny smiled wryly. "Yes, very. As you can see, Yan is the same kanji as Tsubame—the swallow—which is very much a girl's name." A couple boys snickered, stopping quickly, however, when their teacher's eyes swept severely over the classroom.

"There is nothing humorous about that," she stated sharply. "The swallow has great symbolism in many cultures and traditions throughout history." Danny knew quite a few of them himself. In fact, his new name had been the first thing he researched upon reaching England.

"In Egypt, the swallow is associated with the souls of the dead. It was thought that souls would transform into swallows on the journey to the underworld," the half-ghost ventured. He'd been pretty incredulous when Tucker swore he didn't know about the symbolism when choosing the name, especially since transformations and death were topics very close to him.

The teacher smiled at him. Danny found himself amazed at the swift expression change. _Speaking of transformations! _"That's correct, Shigawa-kun. In some cultures, it's also a symbol of loyalty; a promise to return home to those you love." A few distinctively female sighs permeated the room.

Danny had never told his friend about the promise he'd made, which made the coincidental name choice just that much more suspicious.

Especially since a different kanji for the Chinese form of Yan meant _flame._

_At the risk of sounding paranoid, I wonder… could a ghost have something to do with it?_

"Arigato, Shigawa-kun. You may take your seat."

Relieved to get out of the spotlight, he did just that. He'd gotten quite a few more considering glances after his teacher's little addition about his name.

* * *

"If you need help finding your way around, do not hesitate to ask one of your classmates for help. Feel free to come to me or one of the other staff members if you have any other concerns."

"Thank you, _sensei_."

After bowing for what felt like the hundredth time, the two friends left their final class of the day and maneuvered their way through the throng of students.

The hallways extended onwards in their minds. So many people hurried to and fro, so many eyes… so many _eyes_! Oh, their classmates were very polite up front—it was in their culture—but that didn't stop Danny from hearing the whispers, feeling the gazes boring into his face. It felt like an eternity before they were down the front steps of the main entrance.

_Day one, over, and no Kudo in sight._

He should've relaxed at the thought. Classes hadn't been terrible, and neither were the people. It was a far cry from Casper High, to be sure. Besides the little hiccup remembering the "kiritsu, rei, chakuseki" tradition, everything had gone by smoothly. But the compilation of certain events, namely the face issue and the underhanded staring, agitated the half-ghost to the point that even Tucker was getting edgy. "Dude, I haven't seen you this shaky since the first time you asked Paulina out. You won't start dropping your pants now, are you?" the tech genius laughed nervously.

One hand waved nonchalantly through the air. "Nah, I've got it all under cont—ow!" Danny yelped when his book bag landed full force on his foot.

"I can see that," Tucker said with a cocked eyebrow, poking a finger through his friend's intangible shoulder.

Danny sighed. "Point taken," he relented as his limb rejoined the corporeal world. He reached down to grab the strap of his bag. "You don't happen to have any suggestio—_gaflught_!"

Tucker watched in utter amazement as something, or rather some_one_, plowed at full speed past him and into his distracted friend and leader, resulting in a flattened half-ghost detective on the pavement, sandwiched comically underneath the unidentified runner. The tech genius hated to admit it, but he had been taken completely by surprise. Evidently the same was true for the black-haired teenager squashed on the ground.

_I know me and Danny haven't gotten into any real fights in a long time, but are we really _that_ rusty?_

The culprit regained their feet with a short jump as if burned. "I'm so sorry! Are you all right?!"

Danny mumbled something unintelligible before shaking his head rapidly. "Déjà vu," he coughed out at last, recalling a very similar situation from two years ago. He accepted the hand that was offered him, grasping it firmly, and was levered up to his feet with surprising strength.

_Calluses on knuckles, firm stance, nice grip—martial artist. Slender fingers. Female?_

He glanced up through his hair at his observations, barely catching a glimpse of a feminine face with yet another pair of those unusual blue eyes. The figure bowed, hands clasped together over the vivid blues of a Teitan uniform skirt, with long, wavy dark brown hair covering her features.

"I apologize—I should've been looking where I was going. Are you injured?"

_Very slight smoke smell under that soap. Not her; she's too clean, but someone who lives with her smokes quite a lot. She doesn't like it but can't do anything about it, so it's a parent. I'd guess the father, since men are more likely to chain smoke. Clothes and shoes are in very good condition, but not new: she takes care of the things she owns, is very neat, independent, and responsible. I'd go so far as to say she cleans up after the guy. Tough. I feel sorry for him._

The detective-in-training blinked, not betraying his thoughts.

"I have a hard head, so I'm fine," he replied, smiling wryly. "You were running pretty fast. I guess it was a good thing I was there to cushion the impact."

The girl flushed deeply. "If I'd been looking where I was going, I wouldn't have needed a cushion," she retorted, still not meeting his eyes.

Well, all the better for him. She couldn't comment on his face if she didn't look at it.

He shrugged. "What happens, happens. And, as it happens, you were running for a reason, right?"

"I'm trying to catch up with a friend—he was in the newspaper today, so I have to reach him before his ego carries him off!"

Danny hid a snicker behind his hand strategically as the girl looked up. "We wouldn't want that, would we? Go on then. I shouldn't be holding you up, Mori-san."

She smiled gratefully, blue eyes bright. "Thank you! Until next time—_ja_ _ne_!" And before either member of Yang Squad could say a word, she was gone.

Danny dusted his blues off absentmindedly, staring in the direction the girl had gone. "We need a vacation," he deadpanned after a long pause.

"No kidding," Tucker agreed, having stayed silent through the exchange, "between studying, sending and reading team updates, flying over here unexpectedly, tagging along on Hakuba's cases, learning that we know nothing about the local Unseen… all we've been doing is rushing around with barely a break. At this rate, we'll run ourselves to exhaustion!"

A hand ran through dark hair. It was starting to become a habit. "Guess who the only Teitan student in today's paper was? There's only one truth. The others don't count."

"Kudo Shinichi," the tech genius replied, rolling his eyes.

Danny smirked lightly. "I don't believe in coincidences. That girl's no fangirl. She's his _friend."_

"Right, you knew her name." Tucker paused. "How could you tell? The friend part, I mean."

The half-ghost scoffed, pointedly flashing green eyes at the other boy. "Please, Tuck. I've had a _lot_ of experience in _both_ forms. And she's not just any friend; she's either his girlfriend or best friend, from how those girls talk. She's the captain of Teitan's karate team, a Mori-san who I'll definitely be looking up once we get back to base," he concluded, reaching down for his pack once again. Before he did however, he took a quick look to make sure no one else was charging blindly at his back.

Tucker looked at him silently. "…Besides the name, you got all that from the handshake, didn't you?" he deadpanned.

Danny grinned sheepishly. "Almost? More like I connected a series of oddly convenient 'coincidences'."

"Coincidences, shmoincidences. Shows what you've learned." The tech genius nudged his friend in the ribs lightly. "Now about that vacation…"

"Yeah, well… what's one or two days off? We've been preparing for two years to track a cold trail. A couple days won't make much difference, but no longer than that."

"Not such a cold case, dude. Yin Squad found the discrepancies in the fruit loop's company, remember? You know, the guys using it as a cover?" Tucker reminded him.

Danny's grin turned positively feral. "Good times. There's just something about busting part of an international smuggling ring _and_ plugging up what I suspect was a small chunk of funding for our Ravens." He shook his head. "With all the money he has I guess Vlad wouldn't notice someone siphoning cash off to hidden accounts in Japan. I just wish we saw it before anyone got hurt."

"That's as much my fault as yours, and don't you deny it," the tech genius said quickly. Danny had an annoying tendency to put all the blame on himself.

There was silence as Tucker tapped his touchscreen. "How's this sound?" he asked, flipping the device towards his friend. "After school tomorrow, we can have off. No talk of work, business, or serious stuff. Just plain goofing off. Like old times."

Danny smiled slightly. "A day at the amusement park, huh? Sounds good to me."

_Like old times._

* * *

**Yan:** Yes, dear readers, we still exist. We're looking forward to graduating high school and college, heh. One half is going to a nice, faraway university. Ah, but the break from trying to write what wouldn't come… so refreshing. I realized I was taking fanfiction way too seriously. I've since resolved not to force myself into it—if my heart wasn't in my writing, it would definitely show. So I went back, read the chapters over, changed some stuff and added stuff and felt a lot better. Next chapter is where things _actually_ begin. Treat the chapters up to this point as a long introduction. Slow going, I know. Ah, the ambitions of a high school writer… I would love to go back in time and smack myself on the head. Seriously. Next chapter is full content-wise, but no promises on the update time.

**Shadow: **I'd apologize for the wait, but hey, life calls. Anyway, to the random facts! By complete coincidence, Takeru is the same name as the actor who plays Himura Kenshin in the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movie. And since the kanji in his name so well fits this version of Tucker, it is the one used here. This chapter may be mostly filler, but it actually reveals a few details and hints at others. But for what it's worth, sorry for the wait. Stay sharp! And do check out that fan art. I killed my pencils for my contribution. Oh, and I claim creative license for the word _"gaflught!",_ which is the sound of a person being tackled by surprise.

**Cultural note:** _Kiritsu. Rei. Chakuseki._ Stand up. Bow. Sit. This is an introduction at the beginning of class. It shows respect for the teacher. _Onegai shimasu _in this situation implies "please teach us well." Besides things like this, I'll hold back on cultural realism or Danny and Tucker will get eaten alive.


End file.
